VECLASSNitu Authority Statele fernhez MY HART 2498 a tremendous sum for so small a country.
It was obvious that prices would rise in Costa Rica because of the war, regardless of efficient administration, but it is equally true that the opposition to the President would seek to place all the blame on hin. This apparently has been done successfully and the Demo cratic Party has denied that the President has been of any help to labor by raising their wages when he allowed the cost of living to rise proportionally far higher.
In addition to his financial dishonesty the President marital difficulties have not endeared him to the country, though the Costa Ricans are not particularly prudish (Ricardo Jiménez lived for many years with a well known demi monde before he finally married hor. It has been fairly open knowledge in Costa Rica that the President wished to marry a young woman of about 22 years of age and that his wife in sisted on a substantial financial settlement as a condition to divorce, The exceptional amount of property which has been put in his wife name since he became President bears out this contentione 5. Teodoro Picado Lack of Popular Appeal.
arba Into the general picture of the falling prestige of the Administration Teodoro Picado was nominated as the Presidential Candidate of the National Republican Party because it was felt at the time that he had so little personal influence or popularity that it would be easy to substitute another candidate at a later date. It has even been said that Picado was given the nomination in exchange for his signed resignation, In any event, President Calderón Guardia had not completely oven up the idea of extending his term of office at the time Picado was nominated, and from the beginning, as numerous political despatches from this office have pointed out, the names of other man ranging from the able Jorge Hine to the ineffective Manuel Escalante, the present Ambassador at lashington who made such a moss of his job as Minister of Minance, have been considered. Whether because most of the men proposed refused to make the commitments that Calderón Guardia desired or whether, as is far more probable, Calderón Guardia was unable to make up his mind, the President vacillatod too long and Teodoro Picado remained, faute de mieux, the Administrations candidate.
Fou persons in the Administration or in the country as a whole have much faith in his integrity and leadership, though he has several adtirers, and most people who are against hia are so more because of his alliance with Mora and the discredited Administration. On the occasion of the huge demonstration on Costa Rica national holiday, September 15.
1943, to celebrate the creation of a new Ministry of Labor and the promulgation of the new Labor Code, Picado was being put into the background by the Administration and his own party. More important than his position as Presidential nonineo of the National Republican Party was the fact that he was the second ranking official of the country as President of the Costa Rican Congress, and as such he was instrumental in the passage or the Labor Code, but he did not speak at the mass demonstration on Septem ber 15, though sevenl labor leaders did so Soñor Pieado, is aware of the fact that President Calderón Guardia would have double crossed him, at any opportunity and may still do so and the friendship of the two men,