Today’s Video: Fishman's folly

Costa Rica’s federal elections are coming up this Sunday and it appears that Laura Chinchilla of the ruling Liberal National Party will become the country’s first female president. (Assuming her lead in the polls doesn’t continue to shrink and she avoids a runoff against Otto Guevara).

The race for the Tyco presidency has had several unusual moments as Americas Quarterly blogger Alex Leff wrote yesterday:

I was eating dinner at a Japanese restaurant here on the east side of San José, when right-wing candidate Otto Guevara popped on the restaurant's TV screen strapped to a polygraph machine.

"Have you profited in any way while carrying out your duties for which you could be legally charged?" a moderator asked Guevara, 49, of the Libertarian Movement. "Have you lied to the media during your election campaign?" she asked.

Guevara replied "No" to both, and the machine gave him a green light—Canal 7 told viewers he was telling the truth. The front-runner in the campaign, National Liberation Party's (PLN) Laura Chinchilla, refused to participate in the televised interrogation. Guevara is in second place in the polls, hovering at or under 30 percent. Not to miss the opportunity to capitalize on the polygraph test, he bought a two-page spread in national newspapers that boasted he is the only honest candidate in the race.

From Leff also comes the most unusual political ad in Costa Rican (and perhaps Latin American history) that can be boiled down to three words: guy with diapers.

(If you understand Spanish, click here to see the very serious Luis Fishman trying to defend his weird ad).

Online Sources- YouTube, Angus Reid Consultants, Reuters, Americas Quarterly