[2] He ran on a platform to continue free market reforms and to institute an austerity program, and was elected, in a second electoral round, with 58% of the vote in April 2002.

[3] Pacheco is a medical doctor who graduated from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México with a degree in Psychiatry from Louisiana State University.

During this time he continued to teach at the University of Costa Rica[citation needed] and personally attended to customers at the gentleman's outfitters, El Palacio del Pantalón, that he had established in downtown San José in the mid-1980s.

[citation needed] On 1 February 1998 he was elected to serve as a party-list deputy in Costa Rica's unicameral Legislative Assembly, representing the province of San José for the PUSC.

On 7 April 2002, in the second round – the first time the mechanism had been used since the rules were introduced – Pacheco got 58% of the vote, beating Rolando Araya of the social democratic PLN by a narrow margin.