Citizens' Action Party

Citizen's Action Party Partido Acción Ciudadana
Founded	2000
Ideology	Social democracy Democratic socialism
Political position	Centre-left
Official colours	Yellow and Red
Legislative Assembly	11 / 57
Website
http://www.pac.cr/
Politics of Costa Rica Political parties Elections

The Citizen's Action Party (Spanish: Partido Acción Ciudadana; commonly abbreviated as PAC) is a left-leaning political party in Costa Rica.

Its platform is based on encouraging citizen participation and involvement in politics. One of its guiding ideals is to fight against corruption, arguing that it is one of the main causes of subdevelopment and voter apathy. The party took a leading role in the failed campaign against Costa Rica's membership of the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

It was founded in December 2000 and startled the Costa Rican political arena with a very strong showing in the 2002 general elections. In the presidential vote, party founder and candidate Ottón Solís was able to secure 26% of the votes – an unprecedented amount for a third party in Costa Rica – and force a runoff between the two traditional parties, the PLN and the PUSC.

The party won 21.9 % of the popular vote and 14 out of 57 seats in the Legislative Assembly, making it the third strongest political force in the legislature. A few months later, however, after a series of internal disputes, six of the party's 14 deputies resigned from the party, leaving PAC with only eight seats.

In the February 5, 2006 parliamentary election, the party won 17 out of 57 seats. Its candidate at the presidential election of the same day, Ottón Solís won 39.8%, losing to the PLN's Oscar Arias Sanchez by less than 2% in a close election. Arias only won by a few thousand votes over the 40 percent threshold required to avoid a runoff. The number of spoiled ballots was larger than the margin between Solis and Arias.

External links

• Official web site (in Spanish)