A unified country and a unified government working together towards common goals for the benefit of the country is what Carlos Alvarado preached in the last two months of electoral campaign.

One of Costa Rica’s biggest problems throughout the years has been the impossibility of advancing projects through a divided congress, different interests keep bills stuck for even decades and some never see the light.

After the February 4 elections, the Legislative Assembly ended up, once again, divided:

National Liberation Party (PLN) 17
National Restoration Party (PRN) 14
Citizens Action Party (PAC) 10
Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC) 9
National Integration Party (PIN) 4
Social Christian Republican Party 2
Frente Amplio (Broad Front) 1

With the alliance created between elected president Carlos Alvarado and Rodolfo Piza, candidate of the Social Christian Unity Party they add only 19 deputies, which makes the approval of projects complicated and something that will require a lot of negotiation and communication.

One of the strategies implemented by Alvarado will be to offer as many as half the positions of the executive power to members of the opposing parties as long as the parties are willing to compromise and agree on a series of bills and projects part of the government’s agenda that must be supported in the legislative assembly and not stand on the way of their approval.

The information was offered by deputy Otton Solis, from the Citizens’ Action Party in an interview with journalist Ignacio Santos from Channel 7 News (Telenoticias).

“The idea Carlos has is that half plus one of the members of the executive power will be named by him, the rest of the positions will be distributed proportionally according to their legislative representation, the number of deputies that each party has that will be part of a national government”, explained Solis to La Nacion newspaper.

According to Solis, Alvarado expects to meet with members of the executive committees of each party this same week and go over the projects the government is proposing and agree on the ones they can support; if an agreement can be reached then the parties can present three candidates that meet the requirements to particular positions and the president would choose the best one.

Although information was not released on the specific projects they want to push, it is likely that one of this will be the Fiscal Plan as well as infrastructure and security.