Коста-Риканың экс-президенті Абель Пачеко де ла Эсприэлья

President of Costa Rica from 2002 to 2006

Abel Pacheco de la Espriella (/audio=En us Abel Pacheco from Costa Rica pronunciation (Voice of America). ogg//ə/'/b//ɛ//l// //p//ə/'/tʃ//eɪ//k//oʊ/ əBEL pəCHAYkoh; born 22 December 1933) is a Costa Rican politician who was president of Costa Rica between 2002 and 2006, representing the Social Christian Unity Party (Partido Unidad Social Cristiana – PUSC). He ran on a platform to continue free market reforms and to institute an austerity program, and was elected, in a second electoral round, with 58% of the vote in April 2002.

Abel Pacheco and his first wife, Elsa María Muñoz Batha, had five children: Abel, Elsa, Yolanda, Sergio and Valeria.

Pacheco is a medical doctor who graduated from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México with a degree in Psychiatry from Louisiana State University. During the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s Pacheco was a popular presenter of short programmes on Costa Rican television. During this time he continued to teach at the University of Costa Rica and personally attended to customers at the gentleman's outfitters, El Palacio del Pantalón, that he had established in downtown San José in the mid 1980s. He also wrote a series of novels and a number of popular songs. On 1 February 1998 he was elected to serve as a party list deputy in Costa Rica's unicameral Legislative Assembly, representing the province of San José for the PUSC. In the run up to the 2002 presidential election, the PUSC party convention selected him to be its candidate by an overwhelming 76% of the delegates' votes on 10 June 2001. His candidacy was seen as a victory for the rank and file members over the party's entrenched hierarchy. In the first round of the election Pacheco received 38.6% of the vote: just short of the 40% needed to avoid a run off. On 7 April 2002, in the second round – the first time the mechanism had been used since the rules were introduced – Pacheco got 58% of the vote, beating Rolando Araya of the social democratic PLN by a narrow margin.