[SIZE=+3]Candidate breaks a taboo[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+3]and criticizes Figueres[/SIZE]
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Movimiento Libertario presidential candidate walked into a hornets' nest when he characterized Costa Rica's political hero, José Figueres, as corrupt.
The candidate, Otto Guevara Guth, also referred in his television commercial to the relationship Figueres maintained with fugitive U.S. financier Robert Vesco in the early 1970s.
Figueres was the man who led the winning forces in the Costa Rican civil war in 1948, and he is the leader who abolished the military. School children are taught to venerate him.
Guevara was trying to differentiate himself from the other political leaders and suggested they all were corrupt in his televised commercial.
A response was not long in coming. The second wife of Figueres, U.S.-born Karen Olsen Beck, dismissed the allegations at a press conference and said that if Figueres still were alive he would consider Guevara as a misbehaving child.
Others were not so gentle. The aging Alberto Cañas, now president of the Partido Acción Ciudadana, said that no one associated with the Figueres administrations (he was president three times) profited personally.
In fact, records show that Figueres got a $2.2 million investment from Vesco for a financially troubled company he ran that employed 3,000 Costa Ricans.
Figueres, known as Don Pepe, was an astute political leader who balanced the United States against other world powers for the benefit of Costa Rica. He spoke English and said he received most of his education by reading in the Boston Public Library.
Members of the Partido Liberación Nacional that Figueres founded have dominated Costa Rican politics. Many, like Cañas, have left to explore other political options. José María Figueres Olsen, his son, was president from 1994 to 1998.