Yara Jiménez Fallas was elected president of Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly on Friday, becoming the fifth woman to lead the country’s Congress and opening a new four-year term defined by the ruling party’s consolidation of power and the most female-majority legislature in Costa Rican history.
Jiménez, a 52-year-old attorney from Cartago, secured the post with 31 votes from her Partido Pueblo Soberano (PPSO) bench. She defeated Diana Murillo of the National Liberation Party (PLN), who received 26 votes from a four-party opposition bloc that announced a joint cooperation agreement minutes before the session began.
The governing party’s 31-seat majority allowed it to claim every position on the Assembly’s six-member Directorate without negotiating with rival factions, breaking more than two decades of multi-party power-sharing at the head of Congress. Esmeralda Britton was elected vice president, with Gerald Bogantes and Reynaldo Arias serving as secretaries and Kattia Mora and Nayuribe Guadamuz as deputy secretaries. Four of the six positions are held by women.
The vote came one week before President-elect Laura Fernández is sworn in on May 8 at the National Stadium in San José, where delegations from 71 countries and 18 international organizations are expected to attend the transfer of power from outgoing President Rodrigo Chaves. With PPSO holding 31 of 57 seats, Fernández will take office with a working legislative majority — the first time a single party has commanded that kind of strength in the Assembly since 1990.
An unexpected pick
Jiménez was not on most short lists for the Assembly presidency heading into the session. Before her election to Congress, she served as secretary general of the Council of Government and as a direct adviser to President Chaves. She holds a master’s degree in public law from the University of Costa Rica and pursued a specialty in constitutional law at the University of Pisa in Italy, with prior roles at the Central Bank, the Finance Ministry, the General Customs Directorate and the National Treasury.
She had appeared before legislative oversight committees more than once during the outgoing administration, including a January appearance tied to the government’s attempt to award the Barranca-Limonal highway concession to Mexican firm Tradeco, and a 2025 inquiry over the temporary appointment of the Banco Nacional board. Born on November 14, 1973, in San Rafael Arriba de Desamparados, Jiménez is the first PPSO lawmaker to preside over Congress and represents Cartago’s third-place legislative seat.
In her first speech as Assembly president, Jiménez called on lawmakers to prioritize dialogue, respect and concrete agreements, urging Congress to shed its image of unproductivity. “Costa Rica requires efficient alliances based on mutual respect, active listening and a genuine willingness to give way for the common good,” she said. She also pledged to facilitate political coordination across factions and to strengthen the Assembly’s relationship with the executive and judicial branches.
A historic female majority
Jiménez’s election lands at a moment of historic representation for women in Costa Rican politics. The Assembly that took office yesterday includes 30 women among 57 lawmakers — 52.6 percent — making it the most female-majority Congress in the country’s 205-year legislative history. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Costa Rica now ranks fourth in the world for women’s parliamentary representation as of April 2026.
Jiménez joins Rosemary Karpinsky (1986-1987), Rina Contreras (2000-2001), Carolina Hidalgo (2018-2019) and Silvia Hernández (2021-2022) as the only women to have presided over the Costa Rican Congress. The Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres celebrated the result as a step toward parity democracy.
The four opposition factions — PLN, the Broad Front, the Citizen Agenda Coalition and the Social Christian Unity Party — signed a joint agreement minutes before the vote, outlining a seven-point roadmap for the 2026-2030 term covering democracy, security and justice, social development, economic competitiveness, transparency and parliamentary functioning. PUSC faction chief Abril Gordienko said the country needs an Assembly acting “with responsibility, respect and long-term vision,” while Citizen Agenda’s Claudia Dobles framed the alliance as a response to voters tired of permanent political confrontation.
The new Congress now turns immediately toward the May 8 inauguration, where Fernández is expected to take her constitutional oath inside the stadium during a relocated solemn session of the Assembly, before holding her first public Council of Government and signing her opening executive decrees on the same stage.
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