On marquees, billboards, YouTube ads and songs on the radio. For weeks now, the face and name of Luis Abinader have been omnipresent in the Dominican Republic. The current president and candidate for reelection for the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM) hopes to sweep the elections this Sunday. More than 8.1 million Dominicans (800,000 abroad) are called to the polls in these presidential and legislative elections, after four years of a mandate focused on raising the economy, fighting corruption and controlling migration from the country at all costs. neighbor, Haiti. Although no one on the island talks about anything else, it seems that these elections leave little room for surprise, since the country’s main polls give Abinader between 57% and 64% of the votes; more than enough to win in the first round. With 63% of these, he would become the president with the highest percentage of votes in the history of the Republic. The leader, who is already re-elected, wants to go down in history as “the great reformer” of the country and has already called for what he believes will be the opposition to a national pact.
Among the nine candidates running, the three main forces in these elections, in addition to the PRM, are the Fuerza del Pueblo, led by three-time former president Leonel Fernández, and the Liberal Democratic Party (PLD), with Abel Martínez, former mayor. Santiago, the country’s second city, leads the way. Between the three of them they combine close to 90% of the votes – according to surveys – with similar speeches on migration, citizen security and the economic model. Despite the great support he has after the current mandate, for Rosario Espinal, sociologist and political analyst, the president “is not doing anything new.” “This is a giant client state. A party that maintains itself more or less well will remain in power until it fractures or some scandal is uncovered. Abinader will win because this did not happen, but it is no miracle. “The rulers usually remain in power for two terms.”
The surprise that experts fear most is the rise of the far-right candidate, Roque Espaillat. The Democratic Hope Party, inherited from the most sympathetic sectors of the dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, maintains an ultra-nationalist discourse that could also upset the current political board. Some analysts believe that it could be positioned as the fourth political force.
The polls will open at 7:00 a.m. and close at 5:00 p.m. (local time), to elect the president, 32 senators and 190 deputies. A first result is expected around 8:00 p.m.; 6:00 p.m. in Mexico and 9:00 p.m. in Argentina. This will be the second electoral event for Dominicans this year. In February, they renewed the country’s mayoralties, turning practically the entire map blue: more than 70% of these are from the ruling PRM, the prelude to what analysts are betting will happen on Sunday. In the last weeks of the campaign, Abinader has worked hard to convince the disenchanted population that they may not go out to vote. Experts believe, however, that abstention will be lower than that of the municipal elections (47.82%) and the presidential elections of 2020 (50.86%).
Andrea Domínguez, a cleaner in one of the large hotels on the Santo Domingo boardwalk, is very clear that she will vote for him. “If tourism doesn’t come, they send me home. And he brought more than anyone else. Money is moving more, it shows.” The economic argument is repeated like a refrain among all his followers.
Abinader’s popularity is mainly focused on five factors: good management of the pandemic after assuming the presidency in August 2020; the boost to the tourism sector, which brought more than 10 million foreigners to the island for the first time in history and left 7,000 million; an anti-corruption speech that permeated a society fed up with the political class; an economic growth that places it as the ninth fastest growing country in the region and an immigration policy of mass deportations, aligned with a strong anti-Haitian discourse on the island.
However, this economic growth has not been noticed as much by the Dominican popular class who, like Domínguez, recognize that “life is still too expensive; almost impossible”. This is one of the most unequal countries in the region in which 1% of the population controls 42% of the wealth and where, despite the Government increasing the minimum wage twice, it is still less than 500 Dollars. For economist Francisco Tavares, the perception of economic improvement makes sense thanks to the fact that a large part of society receives remittances from the almost two million Dominicans who live abroad, mainly the United States and Spain. “That is why there have been no social revolts, because remittances are a kind of bonus that helps the working class make ends meet,” he says.
Remittances contribute 10 billion dollars and are the second largest slice of GDP, only after exports from free zones (mainly medical devices and gold), which contribute about 12 billion. Tourism is already the third economy, with 7 billion dollars. “The economic model is unsustainable because the first three economies depend on foreigners,” explains the economist. For Tavares, reducing inequality will be one of the great challenges of the next president to occupy the National Palace.
The “falling in love” of voters
“In this country, the people fall in love with the president. And right now they are ‘giving him a chance’ to do better in this new mandate,” says Elvin Calcaño, Dominican political scientist. According to the analyst, Abinader will seek to pass less popular measures such as the labor and pension reform now that he will likely have a majority in Congress and that it will be his last term, as established by the Constitution. “He will want to go down in posterity as a reforming president because inequality rates are absolutely unviable for the future. And he knows it.”
The effort to erase the island’s less prosperous past is so great that the president takes advantage of any occasion to remember that they are now “a middle-income country.” In the last Weekly Before the elections, the program in which the president meets with the press every Monday, when a journalist asked him about the efforts in education “despite being a third world country,” Abinader squirmed in his position and forgot to answer. to the doubt about the brain drain. “We have to change how we see ourselves and assimilate how the world sees us. “We are a middle-income country,” he snapped. “Middle income.” With the zeal of a nouveau riche, the ruler is determined to demonstrate to the world and his own voters that Third Worldism dynamited him during his mandate.
For Calcaño, it is important to stop reading the Dominican parties in ideological terms. They are parties, he says, known as catch all (catch-all) who have no problem allying themselves with more conservative and then more progressive sectors. “Both Abinader and the others have campaigned with what is best for them. Conservatism and reactionism are transversal in all of them and within these same parties there are more and less progressive positions,” he explains.
“Candidates don’t care about women”
That is why the consultant is not surprised that Abinader was not affected by the unfulfilled promises in the campaign regarding the decriminalization of abortion or an initial speech more supportive of Haitian migration. The immigration policy, which many call “apartheid,” has received stronger criticism abroad than on the island itself. Amnesty International published, together with a dozen local organizations, an open letter in which they denounce “racist measures”, racial profiling in “massive” detentions and the closure of any legal avenue to request asylum. But it is a transversal speech from the main candidates. “The fight is to see who is more radical,” says Calcaño.
Something similar happens with women’s rights. The Dominican Republic is one of the five countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in which the interruption of pregnancy is a crime, regardless of the reason for the decision. Neither rape, nor incest, nor the risk to the life of the mother or fetus is a reason to abort. “I agree with the three casuals since before I was a candidate. I think it is an issue of moving forward,” said the president in the 2020 campaign. Four years later, it continues to be listed as a crime in the Penal Code, and preventing the approval of its renewal.
For Sergia Galván, one of the most recognized feminists on the island, this has been a “huge disappointment.” “Abinader has failed women in her campaign promise. Not only in the causes, but when he left rural women aside, when he put immigration in the hospitals to remove pregnant Haitians, when he chose the least equal government team of the last 20 years, when he did not take care of the economic gap or when he let the law on violence against women expire in Congress… He has been instrumentalist in women’s struggles due to his obvious alliance with the Church.” The Dominican Republic is the second country in the region with the highest rate of femicides —after Honduras—, with 2.9 cases per 100,000 women, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). “Violence against half the population does not matter to them. Neither us nor social rights,” she says. “For him, the country is a company.”
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