The Libertarian Movement Party is a political party based on libertarian conservatism in Costa Rica. It was founded in May 1994. After an important protagonism during early 2000s with its perennial nomineeOtto Guevara among the main candidates and reaching third place in 2006 and 2010, it was affected by several corruption scandals and lack of funds, the party gradually suffered a debacle in 2014 ending in fourth on the presidential ticket, and fifth in Parliament. Later losing all its mayors in the mid-term local election of 2016, to finally having its worst results in 2018 with Guevara's candidacy reaching only 1% of support and losing all seats in Congress.
History
Founded by non-partisan liberals from the Academy and liberal defectors of Social Christian Unity Party, contested the 1998 election with Federico Malavassi as candidate receiving only 0.4% of the vote but succeeding in getting attorney Otto Guevara elected as member of the Legislative Assembly. In this time the party was strongly libertarian and was in favor of minimal government, legalization of recreational drugs, same-sex marriage, abortion and the like. In 2002, Guevara ran for president, and the party at the legislative elections won 9.3% of the popular vote and 6 out of 57 seats. A few weeks after taking office, one Congressman left the party and became independent, leaving PML with five seats. In 2006, Guevara again ran for president, and the party at the legislative elections won 9.1% of the popular vote and 6 out of 57 seats. In the 2010 general election Guevara was again the PML's presidential candidate and received 20% of the popular vote, it also increased its number of deputies to nine. At the municipal level the party obtain one mayor in 2006 and two in 2010. In its 2014 electoral campaign, the party took a more socially conservative position, totally opposing the legalisation of abortion and rejecting homosexual couples' right to a marriage license. The party suffered a debacle in the 2014 election, as was relegated to fourth place after PAC, PLN and FA parties, and reducing its congressional representation to less than half, also was unable to elect any mayor in the 2016 mid-term municipal election. This electoral debacle was also costly, as the party was unable to pay some of its campaign debts to both workers, Social Security, loaners and Banks. As previously, in 2015 another deputy defects; Carmen Quesada, who declares herself independent. Also in 2015 several party members went to trial after being accused of fraud by the State, apparently trying to trick the Electoral Tribunal in paying for trainings that were already cover by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. Judges sentenced party's vice president, treasurer and accountant to eight years in prison. For the 2018 general election the party held the first primary election in their history, due to there being more than one members aspiring for the party's nomination for the presidency. The two pre-candidates were Otto Guevara, running for the fifth time, this time under a right-wing populist tone, inspired by the campaigns of Donald Trump. The other candidate was Natalia Díaz, a young, first-time deputy, who promised, if elected, she'll bring a new face to the party and renew its structure and administration. Guevara won with 59.49% of the votes. Due to previous fraud allegations against the party, Otto Guevara's campaign had difficulty finding a bank willing to give the party a loan for campaigning. This changed on January 20, when Promérica Bank loaned the party 500 million colones for the purpose of financing their electoral campaign. On November, 2019 Guevara announced the foundation of a new political party named Liberal Union as the Libertarian Movement would be dissolved as is unable to pay its debts.
Policy positions
The political party generally has a moderately libertarian perspective on policy issues, although sometimes policy proposals on social issues are more conservative, than libertarian, i.e. a legislator introduced legislation that would have banned same-sex couples from adopting or having custody of children. During the 2014 campaign, the party expressed opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage, although Congressman and Presidential candidate Otto Guevara has since said that his major concern about legalizing gay marriage is that the debate over such libertarian legislation would distract the nation from more important matters. On most policy issues, the party favors moderate libertarian reforms such as:
