Elections in the Dominican Republic: Where is the Country headed?

GFDD/FUNGLODE, in association with the Inter American Dialogue and the Embassy of the Dominican Republic in the United States, organized a discussion on the upcoming presidential election to be held in the Dominican Republic May 20th, 2012, with Bernardo Vega, former ambassador of the Dominican Republic to the United States; Rosario Espinal, professor, Temple University; Eduardo Gamarra, Florida International University. The discussion was moderated by Peter Hakim, president
emeritus of The Dialogue and, included the participation of GFDD’s Executive Director, Natasha Despotovic; Michael Shifter, president of The Dialogue; de Aníbal de Castro, Dominican Ambassador to the White House;  and Roberto Saladin, Dominican Ambassador to the Organization of American States, among an engaged audience that overflowed the room.

The speakers gave an insightful analysis of the upcoming election as well as a well detailed overview of the history of elections in the country that resulted very helpful in understanding the situation and the players.

The speakers agreed that the race for the 2012 presidential post has been turning into a dirty campaign with smear promotions and allegations, confirmed that it is a very polarized election, and moved on to analyze the candidates, Danilo Medina,
Party of the Dominican Liberation (PLD,) who ran against Hipólito Mejía in 2000, with experience in high positions in the Fernández government, with a well organized campaign and the professional support of Brazilian experts among others, running with a certain distance from the present presidency;  Hipólito Mejía, whose presidency 2000-2004 left an unsatisfactory taste of inflation, devaluation, banking crisis, running with a party in disarray, in disagreement with the other leader in
the Party. Mejía is not the consensual candidate of the Dominican Revolution Party, PRD. Polls forecast very close results, with few difference points.  The role of the electoral board is also polarized, what makes the observation programs of different regional organizations particularly important.

The high percentage of participation and the small percentage of undecided voters are also some of the features of the Dominican electorate, with party loyalties running
deep among party members as well as supporters.

The discussion about the specific characteristics and the demystification of some common places of Dominican politics and electoral processes in particular showed some key elements that help to understand the development of events.  Dominican politics have been described by historian Jonathan Hartlyn as neo-patrimonial, and all presenters agreed that clientelism played an important part in the
political system, as politics is a daily realty for every single sector of Dominican life.  It was noted by Rosario Espinal that the Dominican Republic led the first democratic transition in Latin America, and this will be the 10th election since 1978, so in spite of all the ills affecting Dominican politics, the process is stable, is participatory and it manages to motivate the population.

The examination of the profile of the candidates took also a good part of the discussion, pointing out the difficulties Danilo Medina may have in being his own man, marking the territory and his independence, and distancing himself from the large shadow of President Fernández. Hipólito Mejía was presented as a volatile personality and, should he win, the almost total impossibility he would have to face of passing legislation and
governing, with one single PRD representative in the senate and keeping the control of a divided party.

The speakers agreed that whoever wins May 20, there is a sense of continuity at most levels of the national and international agendas of the Dominican Republic.

Related link:
http://www.thedialogue.org/

Biographies
Dr. Eduardo A. Gamarra is the former director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center, a professor of political science, and editor of Hemisphere, a magazine on Latin American and Caribbean affairs, at Florida International University. Gamarra is the
author of over one hundred articles on Latin America and is the author, coauthor, and editor of twelve books, including Revolution and Reaction: Bolivia 1964–1985; three volumes of the Latin America and Caribbean Contemporary Record; Latin American Political Economy in the Age of Neoliberal Reform;Democracy, Markets, and Structural Reform in Latin America: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
and Mexico; and Entre la Droga y la Democracia. He has testified several before the US Congress on Latin America and Caribbean issues affecting US policy and has been a consultant to multilateral agencies, the Library of Congress, foundations, non-governmental institutions, executive branch agencies, legislatures, judiciaries, police institutions, and armed forces throughout the hemisphere.

Gamarra is the co-founder of Newlink
Research, a consulting firm dedicated to electoral and public policy campaigns throughout Latin America. Since 2006 and in partnership with Colombia’s Centro Nacional de Consultoría, Gamarra has been involved in the Iberoamerican Governability Barometer, a major survey of Latin America, the Caribbean and the Iberian Peninsula.

Dr.
Rosario Espinal is the former Chair of the Department of Sociology and Director of the Latin American Studies Center at Temple University. Espinal has published extensively on democratization in Latin America, with an emphasis on the case of the Dominican Republic. She is the author ofAuthoritarismo y Democracia en la Política Dominicana (authoritarianism and democracy in the Dominican politics), co-editor of La
República Dominicana en el Umbral del Siglo XXI: Cultura, Política y Cambio Social (the Dominican Republic in the threshold of the XXI Century: Culture, Politics and Social Change), Democracia Epiléptica en la Sociedad del Clic (Epileptic Democracy in the Click Society) and the author of over 50 articles published in academic journals and books in English, Spanish and
French.

She has been a research fellow at the Swedish Institute for Social Research at the University of Stockholm, a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and a teaching fellow at the Latin American Studies Center at Oxford University in England. She has been a Fulbright Fellow to Argentina, Brazil and Peru, and she is currently an elected member of the Executive Council of the Latin American Studies
Association (LASA).

Bernardo Vega graduated as an economist from the Wharton School of Finance of the University of Pennsylvania in 1959 and is the author of more than 45 books on Dominican and Caribbean Economics, History and Archaeology. He has won the national History Award four times and is the only Dominican who has won the “Eduardo León Jimenes Award”  twice for the best book of the year, one of the most prestigious
awards of the Dominican Republic.

Mr. Vega, who also taught at various Dominican universities, worked for more than fourteen years in the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic as Economic Advisor to the Governor, Member of the Monetary Board and eventually Governor of the Central Bank. He was also the general director of the Museo del Hombre Dominicano (Museum of the Dominican Man) for five years.  He is a member of the
Academy of History of his country as well as President of the Board of Regents of INTEC University.

He served as Dominican Ambassador to the White House from January 1997 until July 1999. In 2001-2002 he was the Editor in Chief of “El Caribe”, one of the oldest and most influential Dominican daily papers. He is currently the President of Fundación Cultural Dominicana, a non-profit organization whose main objective is the editing books of Dominican history.