Ottón Solís

Ottón Solís Fallas (born 31 May 1954) is a Costa Rican economist and politician. He was a founding member of the Citizens' Action Party (PAC for its Spanish initials) and ran as its three-time presidential candidate.

He graduated with a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Costa Rica in 1976 and gained a master's degree in economics from the University of Manchester in 1978. He is currently serving his second term as congressman. As an academic, he has taught at several universities in the United States and Costa Rica.

Early political career

Solís was the national economics minister during the Óscar Arias administration, acting in this capacity between 1986 and 1988. He also served as Arias' director of political planning. He was elected as a lawmaker to the Costa Rican Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica from 1994 to 1998, serving with the National Liberation Party, the party he would abandon shortly thereafter.

Founding the Citizens' Action Party

In 2000, Solís, along with several other prominent PLN members, left the party to found PAC. They claimed that PLN's neoliberalism and corruption were reasons to break with the party. Solís was the first president of PAC and a three-time presidential candidate. Since then, Solís has insisted that PAC exists for the sole purpose of fiscal and economic reform. The party survived several internal ideological battles, adding prominent former Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC for its Spanish initials) members during the 2010 presidential campaign. Solis stated that he was not planning to become the PAC's presidential candidate again. This decision reflected, in his opinion, his party’s commitment to remain fresh. He also said, "I never imagined CAFTA was going to be so one sided" and "The law of the jungle benefits the big beast. We are a very small beast." Solís sees several possible detrimental aspects that could come from CAFTA. First, he claims that it will cause the breakup of public telecommunications and electricity monopolies, which will have to be privatized. Additionally, he argues that lowered trade barriers will cause a flood of cheap food products from the United States, which will force small-scale farmers out of the internal market.