Well, I'll take the ball. As I stated before, I think that there's no reason to believe that the Movimiento Libertario has lost its way. Just the opposite, I believe that last week’s National Assembly was a good opportunity for real libertarians to take over the party.

During the years, the ML has been under a “rule of fear” from the Secretary General, a guy who has certainly read every single libertarian book there is, but who nevertheless is an expert in bullying people. Some national delegates, Congressmen, and even Otto were threatened by this guy in different ways for not supporting his candidates.

So this guy recruited some people who have been with the party for several years to run for Congress, including his wife. Some of them were 100% libertarians, some were not. The candidate from Limon wasn't a hard core. The candidate for the 4th position in San José wasn't an ideologue, and yet this side claimed to be the “ideologues”. I prefer the term “Taliban’s”. However, in several instances, when the time came for a vote between real hard core candidates and “gut libertarians” (whatever that is), the ideologues didn’t hesitate to vote for the latter. The “ideologues” also voted for candidates who weren’t 100% libertarians in provinces where there was a consensus. In the end, it was just a cover up to justify the control of the Secretary General.

On the other side, and after 3 years of being bullied and yell at by the Secretary General, several people, including the 5 Congressmen, started to look for more independent candidates that will share as much as possible our principles and who will bring strength to the tickets. That’s how we recruited the former president of the Business Chamber to run for Congress, a woman who helped build business opposition to the tax increase the government is pushing for. In Heredia, we found another woman who is an expert on free market environmentalism. Yes, they are not hard core, but these are people who share most of our ideals, are very committed to the party, and who eventually will follow the party line on tough issues. These are the people who Jorge calls “pragmatists.”

We have to be realists. Some subjects are not issues here in Costa Rica. We can have a Congressman who has reservations about gay marriage, but that debate is not going to arrive to this country in several decades. Someone maybe against legalizing heroine, but there won’t be a bill on that issue for several years.

As a matter of fact, when elected, most of the current Congressmen were not 100% libertarians. And nevertheless, they have done a great job, and there are very few instances where one can say the voted against liberty. In the end, on tough issues, the party line (that is, libertarianism) has prevailed. Besides, it seems almost certain that Otto will return to Congress. Under his leadership, we are guaranteed an almost monolithic caucus.

In the end the “pragmatists” won, and this has caused this schism people are talking about. It was mostly a reaction to the rule of fear from the Secretary General. We won’t have puppet Congressmen as he wanted.

So please, don’t think that the ML is death, or that it’s not longer libertarian. This is being written by someone who is a hard core libertarian. I’ll be the first to denounce any departure from our ideals. However, we are a political party, not a cult. We are here to get elected and make a change for the better. We can nominate blue people who aren’t charismatic and don’t get elected. Or we can take a risk with people who aren’t hard cores but will be elected and will have fellow Congressmen who will lead them on tough issues.

For a political party, not a cult, the choice seems obvious.

PS: José Francisco Salas, the congressman who defected from the ML just one month after being sworn in, won his nomination 4 years ago thanks to the big push made then by the Secretary General, the father of the ideologues.