Fernandez enters workplace together with her right-wing social gathering holding absolute majority within the nation’s legislature.
Printed On 8 Might 2026
Laura Fernandez has been sworn in as Costa Rica’s new president and has vowed to struggle rising crime within the Central American nation, in addition to keep shut ties with the US.
Fernandez defeated a crowded subject within the February 1 vote to switch outgoing president Rodrigo Chaves, who has remained a detailed ally of US President Donald Trump.
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In an unorthodox transfer, Chaves is about to stay within the authorities as twin minister of the presidency and finance, assuring outsized affect within the incoming administration.
Additional underscoring plans to keep up shut ties with the US, Fernandez has appointed her second vp, Douglas Soto, as ambassador to Washington.
Kristi Noem, the US particular envoy spearheading the Trump administration’s militaristic strategy to Latin America, dubbed “Protect of the Americas”, was at Friday’s inauguration.
So too was Israeli President Isaac Herzog, as a part of efforts to boost ties with the area through the political fallout from the genocide in Gaza.
The 39-year-old Fernandez has vowed sweeping reforms to Costa Rica’s judiciary and safety legal guidelines, in addition to a broad crackdown on crime.
Final week, as she launched her new safety minister, Gerald Campos, Fernandez vowed “a warfare with out quarter, a heavy-handed warfare towards organised crime”.
Costa Rica has lengthy been thought of one of the crucial steady nations in Central America, however crime has surged in recent times because it has more and more turn out to be a transit route for smuggling medication to the US.
Costa Rica is constructing a most safety jail modelled on El Salvador’s anti-terrorism CECOT centre, the place lots of of Venezuelans had been held with out trial after deportation from the US early final 12 months.
Like El Salvador, Costa Rica has additionally agreed to accept non-citizens deported from the US per an settlement signed in March.
Rights teams have condemned the so-called “third-country agreements” for stranding deportees in nations by which they haven’t any ties and may very well be topic to inhumane situations.
Fernandez’s right-wing Sovereign Individuals’s Social gathering (PPSO) received 31 of 57 seats within the single-chamber legislature.
That offers her social gathering an absolute majority as she takes workplace.
