Recent public opinion surveys conducted by the Investigative Center of Political Science of the University of Costa Rica suggest that the administration of President Luis Guillermo Solis is not the most popular at the moment, particularly in matters related to the national economy.

According to reports filed by Ernesto Rivera of the weekly Semanario Universidad, 70 percent of voters in Costa Rica believe that the economy is in shambles, and only 18 percent believe that it will get better in the next 12 months. Another situation that is of a major concern in Costa Rica is the growing rate of unemployment, which is estimated to have surpassed 10 percent a few months ago, and which many people believe is much worse than during the previous administration of President Laura Chinchilla Miranda.

In terms of overall governance, President Solis is faring about the same as former President Chinchilla as she entered the sunset of her administration, when 38.3 of voters polled believed that she was doing a bad job; for President Solis, the opinion of his poor governance is currently shared by 37.1 percent.

Moreover, 60 percent of those surveyed believe that Costa Rica is not headed in the right direction under the current administration. The primary concern seems to be unemployment, followed by the high cost of living and the seemingly unstoppable rate of inflation. A little over 16 percent of voters polled believe that the main cause of the troubled economy is poor handling by the government.

At the end of the first 100 days served by President Solis, 46 percent of voters believed that the economic situation worsened; that figure has climbed to 55 percent.

It is important to note that many of the economic woes in Costa Rica are often blamed on the unrestrained issuance of bonds and the accumulation of public debt caused by loans extended by international sources such as the World Bank; to this effect, a recent investigation by Maria Florez-Estrada Pimentel of Semanario Universidad revealed that 79 percent of Costa Rica’s public debt originated in the previous administrations of former Presidents Chinchilla, Oscar Arias Sanchez and Luis Alberto Monge, who are all leaders of the powerful National Liberation Party (Spanish initials: PLN).