National Liberation Party

The National Liberation Party (, PLN), nicknamed the ("green and whites"), is a political party in Costa Rica. The party is a member of the Socialist International. Social-democratic by statute, the party has a few internal factions, including liberals, Third Way supporters, centrists, and social conservatives. History In 1948, a rebel group called National Liberation Army commanded by caudillo José Figueres Ferrer led a rebellion against the government of then President Rafael Angel Calderón Guardia and his communist allies. After the Civil War the rebels were victorious and Figueres took power de facto. Yet, Figueres did not overrule the social reforms made by Calderón and allies, like Social Security, almost free college education and Labor Laws but kept them and even made a series of progressive reforms himself like abolishing the army and introducing taxation on capital. Figueres gave up power in favor of the democratically elected president Otilio Ulate in 1949. In 1951, the Social Democratic Party, the Centre for the Study of National Problems and the group Democratic Action formed the National Liberation Party in October 12 in order to participate in the 1953 election, the first election since the civil war, with Figueres as nominee and democratic socialism as their ideology. This election was very controversial as many parties were unable to participate, among others Calderon’s Republican Party and the Communists. Figueres won easily over the only other candidate with 60% of the votes. For the 1958 general election, the PLN was split, as Jorge Rossi left the party after losing in the primaries and was basically an independent candidate thus splitting the Social Democrat vote. The PLN suffers it first defeat as oppositional candidate, liberal Mario Echandi, won the election with the support of Calderón. However, after this time, PLN will be clearly Costa Rica’s dominant party in the political system as only when the opposition ran united were capable of winning. This was the case in the 1966 and 1978 election, the rest of the time PLN’s nominees tended to win easily.