(born
22 December 1933 , in
San José ) is the president of
Costa Rica , representing the
Social Christian Unity Party ''(Partido Unidad Social Cristiana'' – PUSC). He ran on a platform to continue free market reforms and to institute an austerity program, and was elected, in a second electoral round, with 58% of the vote in
April 2002 .
He was the sixth child of a banana farmer. Part of his childhood was spent in the province of
Limón on the Caribbean coast, but he returned to the capital to complete his secondary education. He then went on, aided by scholarships he had won, to study medicine at the
National Autonomous University Of Mexico in
Mexico City and psychiatry at
Louisiana State University in the
United States .
During this time period, . He drove an armored car with a mounted machine gun. This failed invasion was a vicious but unsuccessful attempt to try to overthrow the freely and democratic elected government of Jose Figueres Ferrer (1953-1958). The invasion, back-up by Nicaragua's dictator (Antonio Somoza Garcia) was condemmed by the OAS and the international community. Costa Rica, having disbanded the formal army in 1949 set up a hastly prepared national force that repelled the invasion stopping the Calderon Guardia forces in the Hacienda Santa Rosa in northern Guanacaste. The invasion failed and the perpetuors were later pardoned and were able to return to Costa Rica in the late 50's during Mario Echandi's presidency.
During the
1970s ,
1980s , and
1990s he was a popular presenter of cultural programmes on Costa Rican television. During this time he continued to teach at the
University Of Costa Rica and personally attended to customers at the gentleman's outfitters, '' El Palacio del Pantalón'', that he had established in downtown San José in the mid-1980s. He also wrote a series of novels and a number of popular songs.
On
1 February 1998 he was elected to serve as a party-list deputy in Costa Rica's
Unicameral Legislative Assembly , representing the province of San José for the PUSC.
In the run-up to the
2002 presidential election, the PUSC party convention selected him to be its candidate by an overwhelming 76% of the delegates' votes on
10 June 2001 . His candidacy was seen as a victory for the rank-and-file members over the party's entrenched hierarchy.
In the first round of the election Pacheco received 38.6% of the vote: just short of the 40% needed to avoid a run-off. On
7 April 2002 , in the second round – the first time the mechanism had been used since the rules were introduced – Pacheco got 58% of the vote, beating
Rolando Araya Monge of the liberal
PLN by a narrow margin.
