COSTA RICA: Centre-left presidential candidate Carlos Alvarado Quesada from the Citizen Action Party declared victory yesterday with more than 60 per cent of the vote.

He defeated right-wing journalist and evangelical preacher Fabricio Alvarado Munoz from the National Restoration Party who lost an early poll lead after saddling his campaign with hostility to equal marriage legislation.

Vice-president-elect Epsy Campbell Barr, whose paternal grandmother migrated to Costa Rica from Jamaica, is the first woman of African descent elected to such high office in Latin America.