Costa Rica’s
National Constituent Assembly was formed after the
1948 civil war.
Elections to the Assembly for a New Constitution were called on December 8, 1948 by the then de facto Junta provisional government presided by
José Figueres. The Assembly took place between January 15 and November 7, 1949. The Assembly successfully drafted and approved the current
Costa Rican Constitution.
Women were not allow to vote or be elected for any of the 45 seats, as
women's voting was still not legal (the 1949 Constitution subsequently gave women the right to vote and be elected). Also, due to the recent civil war, the parties of the losing side, mainly the
Republicans (
Calderonistas) and the
Communists
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
were outlawed.
Nevertheless, a party named
National Constitutional Party led by constitutional experts and lawyers that in many cases were relatives of Republican leaders was allowed to participate and was the second more voted party, according to some historians, thanks to the Republican vote, albeit Republican leader in exile
Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia
Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia (March 8, 1900 – June 9, 1970) was a Costa Rican medical doctor and politician, who served as President from 1940 to 1944.
Early life
Rafael Angel Calderón Guardia was born on 8 March 1900 in San José. In his ...
called for abstention.
The most voted party was
president-elect
An ''officer-elect'' is a person who has been elected to a position but has not yet been installed. Notably, a president who has been elected but not yet installed would be referred to as a ''president-elect'' (e.g. president-elect of the Unit ...
Otilio Ulate’s party
National Union (PUN). The party achieved a
landslide victory with 74% of the vote and 34 of 45 seats.
Yet, even when the party was loosely liberal as Ulate himself, most historians agree that PUN's Assemblymen didn't share much ideological or programmatic coherence other than being Ulatistas.
The third largest party in the Assembly was the
Social Democratic Party
The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology.
Active parties
Fo ...
led by then de facto ruler and victorious leader of the civil war
José Figueres. Unlike the other parties, the Social Democrats had a coherent ideology and political philosophy to follow, and even though it had very few seats (only 4) their members were very influential thanks to their intellectual weight, including among other future president
Luis Alberto Monge and notorious academic Rodrigo Facio. The fourth party was National Fellowship, a left-wing Guanacastecan independence party led by physician Francisco Vargas.
A special committee was appointed by the Assembly to draft a Constitution. Among the committee members were Facio, jurist
Fernando Baudrit Solera and other notorious intellectuals. They made a very progressive Constitution for the time, yet the Assembly's plenary finally disregarded the draft and took the 1871 Constitution as the basis of the new one.
References
{{Reflist
Constituent assemblies
History of Costa Rica
1949 in Costa Rica