Votes are being counted by hand by the Costa Rican election official to mediate one of the closest elections in history, between Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and former president Oscar Arias of the centrist-right National Liberation Party, and Otton Solis, of the newly formed Citizen’s Action Party. Voter turnout for the election was 65 percent, the lowest in Costa Rican history. One of the primary issues of the campaign was ratification of the Free Trade Agreement for Central America, which Otton Solis was against and Arias was in favor of.