SAN JOSE: Costa Rica’s government on Tuesday said it had uncovered a plot to assassinate President Rodrigo Chaves on the eve of national elections, in which his right-wing party is tipped for victory.
Jorge Torres, head of the Central American nation’s Directorate of Intelligence and National Security, cited a “confidential source” as informing the agency that a hitman had been paid to attack Chaves.
The purported plot comes two weeks before the country holds presidential and parliamentary elections.
Chaves, who is barred by the constitution from seeking a second consecutive term, has backed one of his former ministers, Laura Fernandez, to succeed him.
Opposition groups have warned against what they see as possible interference in the election from the iron-fisted president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele.
Chaves has invited Bukele to Costa Rica on Wednesday to lay the founding stone of a new mega-prison modelled on El Salvador’s brutal Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
Thousands of young men are being held without charge in CECOT, as part of Bukele’s war on gang violence.