Dominicans Likely to Ditch President for His Predecessor

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic â€”  Magaly del Rosario dutifully hauls the plastic furniture under the eaves at Harry’s Bar to keep it dry in case a customer drops by between deluges in these early weeks of the rainy season.

It’s more than the threat of getting wet, though, that has made a veritable ghost town of the quaint cobblestone expanse of Plaza de la Hispanidad and the dozen shops and restaurants arrayed around it.

With inflation approaching 50%, the national currency gutted by devaluations and a doubling of foreign debt under President Hipolito Mejia, Dominicans have no money to patronize the small businesses that sprouted during the boom years of the late 1990s, when this country boasted the most robust growth in the Western Hemisphere.

The whiplash-inducing fall of Dominicans’ fortunes in less than two years is expected to cost Mejia a second term and return former President Leonel Fernandez to power after today’s election, or a June 30 runoff if neither gets at least 50% in a race with 11 candidates.

Although Mejia has been chipping away at what was originally a 45-percentage-point Fernandez lead in the polls in recent weeks with promises of government wage increases and gifts of equipment to farmers, few here expect him to overcome a 70% “unfavorable� rating unless there is widespread fraud.

“If Fernandez doesn’t win, we’re sunk,� insisted Del Rosario, a single mother of three, who counts herself lucky to have any work amid 17% unemployment.

“It’s like this everywhere now,� she said, gesturing to the abandoned square that used to be a favorite evening haunt of local merchants and students. “People have no money. They can’t eat at home, never mind in restaurants.�

The “ditch Mejia� sentiment is widely and unabashedly expressed in small-business circles and in opinion polls that give the incumbent, at best, about 27% of the vote against 54% for lawyer Fernandez and 11% for Eduardo Estrella, a protege of the charismatic late leader Joaquin Balaguer.

Voters and analysts alike have scoffed at Mejia’s reelection theme: “Now, for the good times,� reads the slogan behind the 63-year-old’s image.

“I guess he was saving them,� said chef Luis Parades as he took a smoking break behind a restaurant near the cathedral.

The 40,000-member National Retailers Front endorsed 50-year-old Fernandez, from the centrist Dominican Liberation Party, who served as president for the four years before Mejia’s 2000 election.

Tens of thousands turned out for each of the candidates’ closing rallies despite torrential downpours, and Mejia’s Dominican Revolutionary Party’s horn-honking caravans were as visible and noisy in recent days as the purple-clad supporters of Fernandez. But analysts contend that Mejia’s support is limited to a part of the peasantry he connects with from his earlier career in agricultural science and the state bureaucracy to which he has promised raises.

“He oversaw the worst economic crisis in the Dominican Republic’s recent history. It would be extremely difficult for him to preside over any recovery,� said Daniel P. Erikson, Caribbean program chief at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington.

This is the first election granting voting rights to the Dominican diaspora, and more than 50,000 emigrants living in the United States registered. Both Mejia and Fernandez campaigned vigorously for the foreign votes, but their voice will have little influence in this country of nearly 9 million.

With a legacy of corruption and a volatile mix of highly spirited supporters for both Hipolito and Leonel, as the candidates are universally called, some fear there could be trouble during the vote and afterward.

“Throughout our history, the party in power has always tried to influence the vote,� observed Bernardo Vega, a former ambassador to the United States and editor-in-chief of the daily El Caribe. “The question now is if we’ve matured enough to have an election without fraud.�

National strikes protesting nightly blackouts and rising prices in November and February pitted government supporters and opponents in scattered street fighting that killed a dozen people -- confrontations that could reignite if employees of the Mejia government fear losing their jobs under a new administration.

The next president will face the task of trimming the bloated government payroll, notes Vega. Tax reform will also have to be tackled to satisfy the International Monetary Fund, which has imposed strict fiscal restraints in exchange for lending to ease the current crisis.

Despite a vibrant tourism industry and free-trade zones that have attracted healthy foreign investment, the national economy was shattered by Mejia’s decision to bail out depositors after the late-2002 collapse of BanInter, a pyramid investment operation involving many wealthy Mejia supporters that cost the treasury more than $2 billion.

Forced to borrow heavily to pay public workers and keep the lights on, the country saw its foreign debt rise in less than two years from $3.7 billion to $7.6 billion, more than 50% of gross domestic product.

“Leonel Fernandez has adopted a rational, orthodox approach to economics, but if he wins he will face constraints in stabilizing the fiscal and financial situation,� said a U.S. diplomat here, noting that the IMF bridge loans have been spent already and the public coffers are empty.