Carlos Denton, executive director at CID/Gallup: “During the six months that Rodrigo Chaves spent as Costa Rica’s finance minister, he discovered an entrenched and very expensive public bureaucracy that made change for the better almost impossible. The government spends 50 percent of its annual budget on salaries; this is double what any member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development allocates for this purpose, and much of this in recent years has been paid out using borrowed money. During his presidential campaign, Chaves offered to streamline government and to reduce government monopolies in the energy sector. If well-organized public-sector workers oppose his actions, he has promised to use the referendum mechanism laid out in the Constitution to achieve his goals. His political party only has 10 legislators in the 57-member Legislative Assembly, and cobbling together a working majority may be difficult on these kinds of issues. The referendum, only used once to ratify…”