Monday 14 May 2012

The Opposition: Hipólito Mejía and the PRD's fight for the presidency

The opposition for this election is represented by former President Hipólito Mejía (2000-2004) and the PRD (Partido Revolucionario Dominicano). Despite its name it is no longer, and actually never was, a revolutionary party, but it belongs to the Socialist International organisation, and claims to be a social-democratic party. For a Norwegian it feels a stretch to define the PRD as a social-democratic party, today I would say it is a mass-based populist party. Compared to the PLD which is also a mass-based populist party, the PRD has a somewhat more authentic "street-approach", while the more educated PLD seem to be less authentic in their populism, even though the end result is much the same.

The PRD is the oldest party in the country, founded in exile on Cuba in 1939 as an opposition party to the Trujillo-regime (1930-1961). It is the party that in opposition fought Trujillo first to claim democracy for the country, and then Balaguer (1966-1978), and can to a certain extent, claim that the final transition to democracy in 1978 was their victory. It is also the party, represented at the time by Juan Bosch, that won the first free and democratic election in the country in 1962. Juan Bosch was elected President, a position he only had for about 7 months before he was couped by the military. Bosch who was one of the founders of the PRD, left the party in 1973 because he had lost faith both in his mass-based party and in democracy. Now, Bosch sought a dictatorship with popular support, and used the newly founded PLD as his vehicle. PRD was the democratic hero of the 12 years of Balaguer rule (1966-1978), also called "los doce años". The party fought for its and the citizens' democratic rights, and won the final battle in 1978 with the presidential elections that year. Silvestre Antonio Guzmán (PRD) was elected president that year and he presided over the first democratic, uninterrupted electoral period of the Dominican regime. President Guzmán sadly committed suicide in July 1982, just one month before he was to hand power over to Salvador Jorge Blanco (also PRD). Jorge Blanco got to rule during the worst economic crisis of the 1980s in the DR and in Latin America, and has later been remembered (erroneously) as one of the worst and most corrupt presidents of the Dominican Republic. In reality, Blanco's government did manage the country's economy quite well considering all the problems it encountered due to the international economic downturn in the region.

When Jorge Blanco took over power, the PRD was already split in several factions. Guzmán's vice-president (and short-time president) Jacobo Majluta fought for the candidacy in 1982, but Jorge won. After Majluta had lost he fought the Jorge government from the Senate (many say Jorge fought the Guzmán government from the Senate in the previous four years). Majluta won the internals for the presidency for the 1986 elections, but lost the election to Balaguer. Later, Majluta would have to fight Peña Gómez for the presidency, a fight that would lead to a split between the Majluta faction, who left the party and founded the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) and the Peña Gómez faction (who stayed with the PRD). The split between the two faction was the culmination of a conflict that started back in the 1970s with the battle for the presidency in 1977/78.

The PRD would also later be battled by internal splits. Peña Gómez managed to maintain unity until his death in 1998, and for the 2000 election Hipólito Mejía got half the votes while Joaquín Balaguer (PRSC) and Danilo Medina (PLD) split the remaining half of the votes. In 2002, however, when Hipólito Mejía decided to reform the constitution to open for immediate presidential reelection, the fight was on again in the PRD. Presidential aspirers such as Hatuey De Camps, Fello Suberví, Milagros Ortiz Bosch, Enmanuel Esquea Guerrero, and others were disgusted by Mejía's actions, in particular considering him running a dysmal government that seemed to run the country into an economic havoc (this was not all Mejía's fault, but his rule did not make things better). Mejía's decision was very important for the DR regime since it also opened up for the return of Leonel Fernández, and this decision has been very detrimental to internal party democracy and recruitment of new leaders in the parties and the country as a whole. Under the 1994 constitution Mejía was barred from ever running for presidency again, Mejía changed that in 2002 and at the same time opened up for the Fernández rule 2004-2012. The latest constitutional reform which does not allow reelection, but has no upper limit on how many times one can run for the presidency, opened up for Mejía's current run for the presidency (and eventually President Fernández's future runs for the presidency). Anyway, Mejía's reelection bid split the party (Hatuey DeCamps left the party and created the PRSD) and Mejía became the first Latin American incumbent president since Daniel Ortega in 1990 not to win a reelection bid (many Latin American presidents have of course never had the opportunity to get an immediate reelection). 


The 2000-04 rule of Mejía was not a succesful one. First, in 2002 he reformed the constitution to open for immediate presidential reelection. This was unpopular because the PRD was created around the idea of no-reelection since the founders held the belief that reelection had been influential in Trujillo's rise to power and, later, in the prolongation of his rule. The former party leader, Peña Gómez, even wrote his Master thesis in Law about the topic, and was vehemently against reelection of any kind. Second, Mejía ruled when one of the biggest banks in the country went bankrupt, and two more medium-sized banks fell as well. The Baninter case is a story in itself and involved high-end government corruption (of several governments), and most importantly, bankers' illegal use of their clients' money. The crisis was handled relatively poorly, and the government lost more money than necessary over the crisis, but it managed to save the bank clients' money. After international pressure, leaders of Baninter had to go to jail. Third, the Dominican economy was already in shambles when the banks couldn't survive any longer and inflation rose to Venezuelan levels. In 2004, the PRD therefore made its worst electoral performance since 1990 and Leonel Fernández (PLD) won the presidency in a landslide.

Mejía managed to win the open primaries in 2011 by beating PRD president and presidential candidate in 2008, Miguel Vargas Maldonado. Mejía's rise from the dead came as a shock to many, but Vargas Maldonado, who had managed to unite the leadership of the party and counter-arrest the party's tendency of split leadership between the party and the presidential candidates, had abused his powers and ignored internal party democracy. For the 2010 legislative and local election Vargas Maldonado imposed many of his own candidates for the legislature and mayoral election, often bypassing internal democratic processes. This made him increasingly unpopular in PRD circles (many were already annoyed with him due to his fight for a unitary leadership, despite being a formula for division many in the PRD fear concentration of power and prefer divided leadership). Vargas Maldonado also miscalculated the impopularity of Fernández's constitutional reform when he signed a pact with Fernández to carry the constitution in the spring of 2009. The only serious contender to Vargas Maldonado was Hipólito Mejía. Vargas Maldonado has never accepted the loss in the primary and he still claims that Mejía won due to PLD votes in the open primary. His theory, which sounds valid, is that the PLD would rather meet Mejía in the presidential race than himself. However, he has no reason to quarrel, being the PRD president he could of assured a closed primary only open to PRD members instead of organising an open primary open to all adult citizens.

The problem for the PRD, however, is that the most popular candidate within the PRD, Mejía, is the most disliked candidate among supporters of other parties and independents (due to the 2000-04 rule). Therefore, Mejía has faced problems in the electoral campaign, and since the PLD seems to hate him (I know, strong word, but it seems that way), the fact that Mejía is running has raised the tension of the campaign (that plus the fact that it is going to be a very close race). The other problem for the PRD in this campaign is that Miguel Vargas Maldonado, the party's president, has refused to do any campaigning in favour of the party's presidential candidate. The party is again split between the party leadership, or probably just leader, and its presidential candidate. Given these two factors many would say it is quite surprising that the race is as close as it is. With a united party or another candidate, this election could have looked very different for the PRD.

So what about Mejía's campaign? It has not been very programmatic, no campaigns are in this country. If anything it is obvious that the PRD wants to focus on farmers and food-production, which the PRD argues has been ignored by the current administration. Also, Mejía highlights that he will fight poverty, meet social demands, support the 4% of GNI to education, and fight corruption. Apart from that his campaign slogan has been "Llegó Papá" (Father/Daddy is here), a clear reference to the patrimonial political culture that reigns here. Apparently the slogan came about when some of his supporters were waiting for Mejía to arrive at the airport and someone shouted out "Llegó Papá" when they saw him. This slogan caught on and has been used for some time (First Lady and Vice-presidential candidate Margarita Cedeño used Llegó Mamá for some time as well.). The slogan is somewhat inappropriate considering the history of the Island of Hispaniola and that the last president to use the nickname Papá, was the dictator Papa Doc in Haiti.

Mejía's campaign has been on a downward slope for some time. Late last year Mejía was winning according to most independent surveys, but lately Cid/Gallup Hoy, Penn Schoen and Berland, and Diario Libre's Greenberg survey have Medina as winner in the first round. This seems to have diminished somewhat PRD's drive lately. Mejía has also committed what has been perceived by the media and maybe the public, as several blunders. Only one, maybe two, of these are serious. First he said jokingly that if Obama whose ancestors come from Africa, has made it, Dominicans in the USA should also be able to make it. This occurred in an election meeting in New York. The Dominican senate embarrased itself and the nation by sending a communiqué to the president asking forgiveness for Mejía's transgression. Mejía did not say anything untrue, and his point in the speech was rather ok and decent, and curiously Leonel Fernández used almost the exact same words in a speech some years earlier. The other blunder was that Mejía said that domestic workers stole the food from their patrons/bosses. His point was that they were so poor that they had to steal to get by and that he would do something about it. The story was spun that Mejía was accusing this relatively poor group of stealing. The third blunder was that Mejía said that he would revise any current contract the state has with private companies and not pay the contracters if he found out that the contracts were the result of a corruption scheme. To suggest that the state would not uphold contracts is serious, and the PLD and the media used this as evidence that Mejía is erratic. The last blunder, and most serious one, is that Mejía criticised the Supreme Court for being politicised and the judges for being in the pocket of President Fernández. While this may be true, Mejía also added that he'd like to reshuffle the court. This latter statement is serious and is contrary to his desires of a less politicised Supreme Court. Sadly for Mejía this statement ruined what was an otherwise good speech on democracy and the political system of the DR.

Mejía knows he is fighting an upward battle and argues that his fight with Medina is a David vs. Goliat match. I am not sure whether the playing field is that tilted, but I am sure that Mejía would like to repeat David and beat Goliat/the government/PLD/Danilo Medina.

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