Caribbean & Central America - February 2016 (ISSN 1741-4458)

The official campaigning period ahead of the Dominican Republic (DR)’s 15 May general elections began on 2 February. A presidential victory for the ruling Partido de la Liberación Dominican (PLD) would seem a foregone conclusion, with President Danilo Medina looking like a shoo-in to win re-election. However, the concurrent national legislative and municipal elections will likely provide the debutant opposition Partido Revolucionario Moderno (PRM) with the chance to make an impression.

The May elections will mark the first time that full municipal, national legislative and presidential elections will be held concurrently in the DR since 1998, when the authorities introduced mid-term legislative and municipal elections. But this was reverted in 2010. Thus over 4,000 posts are now up for grabs in the elections including the entire 222-seat national congress (190 deputies and 32 senators) and the country’s 150 municipalities, plus thousands of municipal council seats.

The informal campaign ahead of the elections arguably began already last year when the PLD promoted a constitutional reform to re-introduce consecutive presidential re-election to allow Medina to stand for election again this year. This became a reality after the PLD struck a political pact with its traditional rival, the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD) [RC-15-07]. While on 2 February the president of the national electoral council (JCE), Roberto Rosario, formally declared the start of the official campaign period that will run until 13 May, the unofficial launch of the campaigning took place two days earlier, on 31 January, when the PLD formally proclaimed Medina as its presidential candidate during a mass rally in Santo Domingo.

Flanked by PLD party president, former president Leonel Fernández (1996-2000; 2004-2008; 2008-2012), Vice-President Margarita Cedeño (Fernández’s wife), and other PLD party leaders, Medina delivered an eminently electoral speech. Unveiling the slogan of his campaign as ‘Vamos por más’ (‘going for more’) he said that in a second term he would seek to continue to reduce poverty by promoting investment and job creation in the country; and continue setting the foundations for the country’s development by promoting better education. “After four years the country is better because we have done what never before has been done. But we can do much more, barriers can always be broken and we are going for more”, Medina said launching the PLD’s bid to secure a fourth consecutive presidential term.

Medina added that if he won re-election he would also focus on promoting greater government transparency, and continuing the fight against official corruption and criminality. Yet these are precisely the areas in which the opposition says that Medina has been weak. In fact, the PRM presidential candidate, Luis Abinader, has accused Medina of demonstrably failing to address these issues, pointing to rising public insecurity and the continued emergence of major corruption scandals [RC-16-01].

These attacks have helped Abinader to secure 35%-40% of voting intentions in pre-electoral polls, to 49%-52% for Medina (50%+1 of the vote is required for a first round victory). While Abinader is still considered a long-shot to win the presidency, the PRM will be hoping that this support for him will translate into votes for its congressional and municipal candidates, and that it wins more congressional and municipal seats than the PRD, consolidating its position as the main opposition following its split from the PRD last year.

• Rosario

The president of the national electoral council (JCE), Roberto Rosario, said that the JCE would use all its resources to ensure that the elections are “the cleanest and most transparent in the country’s history”. Rosario added that the JCE would also ensure that the electoral candidates from the 26 political parties and eight political movements registered for the contest enjoy “equal opportunities and standing” so that the results “truly reflect” the will of the 6.7m electorate. Since its creation in 1923, the JCE has been in charge of organising all elections in the DR, which have been periodically held even during the Rafael Trujillo dictatorship (1930-1961), when confidence in the JCE was low. Confidence in the JCE has increased since then but some still harbour doubts about it.