Harassment Case Tests Women’s Rights in Costa Rica’s Close Election

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica — He was demoted from a senior place on the World Financial institution due to sexual harassment. Now, the economist Rodrigo Chaves — who has campaigned as a populist outsider in an election marked by anger at conventional politicians — leads the polls to turn into Costa Rica’s subsequent president on Sunday.

It’s an sudden rise to prominence in a rustic that has taken a lead function within the development of progressive insurance policies in Central America, underlining how the need to punish political elites for what many citizens see as an insufficient authorities response to the area’s political scandals and financial challenges is overshadowing most different points.

In 2019, Mr. Chavez was reprimanded by the World Financial institution for what was proven to be a sample of sexual misconduct towards junior staff, although the small print of his conduct have been made public by a Costa Rica newspaper solely in August — particulars the presidential candidate has repeatedly rebutted.

Mr. Chaves’s denial and downplaying of a documented historical past of sexual harassment come two years after one other Costa Rican politician, the previous president and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Óscar Arias Sánchez, narrowly prevented prosecution for sexual abuse, in a scandal that shook the nation.

Mr. Arias was accused in 2019 of sexual assault or misconduct by a minimum of 9 ladies, rising as some of the important #MeToo instances in Latin America. Nevertheless, in December 2020, the fees introduced towards him by two of the ladies have been dropped.

Human rights activists now say that Mr. Chaves’s bid for energy threatens to undermine progress in Central America’s most liberal and egalitarian nation.

“The message that that is sending to society is that sexual abuse is one thing minor, one thing not critical,” stated Larissa Arroyo, a Costa Rican human rights lawyer. “This marketing campaign is normalizing and legitimizing the abuse.”

Mr. Chaves and his press workplace didn’t reply to an interview request.

Mr. Chaves languished in obscurity till his alliance with Pilar Cisneros, a distinguished feminine Costa Rican journalist, who introduced him to Costa Rican voters as an skilled administrator who would sort out corruption.

Only a day after Ms. Cisneros joined Mr. Chaves’s marketing campaign in August, the native newspaper La Nación made public the World Financial institution’s investigation that discovered he demonstrated a sample of sexual harassment towards junior feminine staff between 2008 and 2013.

Mr. Chaves responded by downplaying the findings: “Those that have kidnapped the nation are already displaying their worry of the candidacy of Rodrigo Chaves.” he stated in a video handle posted on social media hours after the article’s publication.

The revelations did little to wreck Mr. Chaves’s marketing campaign. When the investigation was revealed, he was polling at simply 2 p.c. By the primary spherical of nationwide elections, held in February, he had earned sufficient votes to maneuver onto the presidential runoff.

Ms. Cisneros got here to Mr. Chaves’s protection, serving to to protect him from the total impression of the revelations. “Do you suppose that Pilar Cisneros would have supported a sexual harasser?” she informed the native media in January. The following month, she gained a congressional seat for Mr. Chaves’ celebration.

Forward of the ultimate vote on Sunday, the state-run College of Costa Rica discovered Mr. Chaves narrowly main towards his opponent: a former Costa Rican president, José María Figueres. In a ballot of 1,000 voters carried out by the college on March 24-28, Mr. Chaves led by 3.4 proportion factors, barely above the survey’s margin of error of three.1 p.c.

A separate ballot revealed by the College of Costa Rica on March 1 discovered that solely 13 p.c of voters thought that harassment accusations towards Mr. Chaves have been false. However 45 p.c stated that the accusations wouldn’t affect their vote.

Mr. Chaves has benefited from the unpopularity of his opponent, Mr. Figueres, who has been marred by accusations of corruption throughout his first time period in workplace within the Nineteen Nineties. Mr. Figueres, who leads the nation’s oldest and largest political celebration, the Nationwide Liberation Occasion, is accused of receiving funds within the early 2000s from a French telecommunications firm in return for preferential therapy whereas he was president.

Mr. Figueres has denied the accusations, and prosecutors who investigated the funds, which occurred after he stepped down, didn’t press fees.

Nevertheless, within the eyes of many Costa Ricans, Mr. Figueres and his celebration have come to symbolize the venality and elitism of the nation’s political system, which many imagine is now not capable of clear up the nation’s financial issues, stated Ronald Alfaro, who leads the College of Costa Rica’s Middle of Political Research and Investigation.

Costa Rica’s tourism-reliant financial system suffered drastically from the pandemic — in 2020, its gross home product noticed its best drop in 4 a long time. Whereas components of the financial system bounced again, the nation is struggling to rein in rising meals and gasoline prices.

“The accusations find yourself canceling one another,” Mr. Alfaro stated. “Voters find yourself casting their ballots not for the candidate they like however towards the candidate they imagine has extra fleas than the opposite,” he stated.

Turned off by the scandals round each candidates, most Costa Ricans seem to have misplaced curiosity within the election. Solely 1 / 4 of all registered voters solid their ballots for both Mr. Chaves or Mr. Figueres within the first spherical of elections, which had the bottom turnout in 70 years.

Paperwork from the World Financial institution’s inner tribunal and labor union present that Mr. Chaves was punished in 2019 after two feminine staff filed harassment complaints. On the time, he was the financial institution’s nation head for Indonesia, a director-level place overseeing billions of {dollars} of lending to one of many world’s largest creating economies.

The ladies stated Mr. Chaves made makes an attempt to kiss junior staff on the mouth, made sexual feedback about their appearances and repeatedly made unwelcome invites to resort rooms and dinners. The identities of the ladies haven’t been made public.

One girl, who reported to Mr. Chaves, informed the tribunal that he “commented that he preferred it when she bent over, then proceeded to drop an merchandise and ask her to select it up for him,” a request she stated she refused.

Mr. Chaves was demoted and his wage was frozen, however the financial institution stopped wanting explicitly calling his conduct sexual harassment. He left the group days later and returned to his native Costa Rica to turn into the finance minister for the president, Carlos Alvarado.

The Costa Rican Communication Ministry stated the present authorities had been unaware of the harassment case, and that Mr. Chaves informed its members on the time that he returned as a result of he needed to spend his retirement together with his aged mom.

Inside six months, Mr. Chaves left his ministry place and introduced a presidential bid with a little-known political celebration, promising to “return energy to residents” by holding referendums on essential coverage subjects.

Regardless of Mr. Chaves’s departure from the World Financial institution, his accusers introduced an enchantment to the inner tribunal to overview the financial institution’s misconduct investigation.

“The details of the current case point out that Mr. C’s conduct was sexual in nature and that he knew or ought to have identified that his conduct was unwelcome,” the tribunal stated in its June ruling. A World Financial institution official stated the financial institution didn’t dispute the details of the case as introduced within the ruling.

Even earlier than the ruling was issued, in January 2021, the group banned Mr. Chaves from its premises and imposed a rehiring ban. The financial institution’s sister group, the Worldwide Financial Fund, stated it additionally restricted Mr. Chaves’s entry to its premises.

Within the months since, Mr. Chaves has denied or misrepresented the findings; as an alternative, he’s stated that the World Financial institution discovered little greater than an allegation towards him, referring to the financial institution’s preliminary determination to not name his wrongdoings sexual harassment.

He has additionally stated that he can freely go to the World Financial institution’s workplaces — contradicting the financial institution’s ban on his entry — and that as president he’ll proceed doing enterprise with the financial institution, which has $2.3 billion in excellent loans in Costa Rica.

Mr. Chaves has additionally promised to “revise” the legal guidelines on in vitro fertilization and abortion, which have been made extra accessible by current presidential decrees. Abortion is authorized in Costa Rica when the being pregnant threatens a girl’s well being.

These measures threaten to derail the sluggish however noticeable advances in ladies’s reproductive rights underneath the current governments, stated Ms. Arroyo, the human rights lawyer. She stated the proposals additionally would injury Costa Rica’s function within the development of social rights in a deeply socially conservative area the place abortion is essentially banned and the place violence towards ladies goes largely unpunished.

Costa Rica’s political stability and powerful democracy have lengthy made it an outlier in a area dominated by authoritarians and arranged crime, and the nation has achieved one in all Latin America’s highest ranges of social inclusion, in areas starting from entry to schooling and well being care to civil rights.

“If Costa Rica declines in its safety of girls’s rights,” Ms. Arroyo stated, “it’s almost definitely that the remainder of the neighboring nations is not going to have this instance to maintain shifting ahead.”