Ruling-party candidate Johnny Araya was ahead in Sunday's presidential election in Costa Rica but would probably need to face a run-off against the second-placed candidate, dpa cited the first official results as showing. With over 23 per cent of the ballots counted, Araya, of the social-democratic National Liberation Party, had 33.2 per cent of the votes. He therefore seemed unlikely to reach the 40 per cent he needed to be elected president in just one round of voting. From a total of 13 candidates, Luis Guillermo Solis, of the centrist Citizen Action party, had 25.4 per cent of the votes, while leftist Jose Maria Villalta, of the Frente Amplio, had 17.7 per cent.
