US embassy cable - 04SANTODOMINGO3358

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 SANTO DOMINGO 003358 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR WHA, WHA/CAR, WHA/PPC AND DRL;NSC FOR SHANNON AND 
MADISON;LABOR FOR ILAB;TREASURY FOR OASIA-LAMONICA 
USDOC FOR 4322/ITA/MAC/WH/CARIBBEAN BASIN DIVISION 
USDOC FOR 3134/ITA/USFCS/RD/WH 
DHS FOR CIS-CARLOS ITURREGUI; SOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/07/2014 
TAGS: PGOV, PINR, DR 
SUBJECT: DOMINICAN TRANSITION #2: POLITICAL PARTIES RE-GROUP 
 
REF: A. (A) SANTO DOMINGO 2968 
 
     B. (B) SANTO DOMINGO 3056 
     C. (C) SANTO DOMINGO 3313 
 
Classified By: Economic and Political Counselor Michael Meigs for Reaso 
n 1.5 (b) and (d). 
 
1. (SBU) This is no. 2 in our series on the transition to a 
new administration 
in the Dominican Republic. 
 
POLITICAL PARTIES RE-GROUP 
 
(SBU) Following Leonel Fernandez's sweep of the May 16 
presidential election, the three major political parties are 
grappling with their futures -- the winning PLD to maintain 
party unity and ensure "governability" with an 
opposition-controlled Congress, and the losing PRD and PRSC 
to restructure, forge an effective opposition, and organize 
for better performance in the 2006 legislative and municipal 
elections.  The era of the strongmen is past, and the losers 
will have to try to learn democracy in-house. PRSC strongman 
Joaquin Balaguer died in 2002 and PRD statesman Jose 
Francisco Pena Gomez in 1998, and a strict interpretation of 
the Constitution might bar President Mejia from trying again. 
 
 
PLD - In the catbird seat 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - 
 
(SBU) Leonel Fernandez's Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) is 
united in anticipation of returning to power on August 16. 
Rivalries among the party's political leaders subsided over 
the past year as victory looked more and more certain. 
Undaunted by his own loss in 2000, Danilo Medina served as 
Leonel's campaign strategist and now co-chairs the transition 
team.  Medina strongly influences the party machinery. 
Former Vice President (1996-2000) Jaime David Fernandez 
Mirabal stayed in the shadows for most of the campaign, but 
belatedly supported Leonel's candidacy.  Fernandez Mirabal 
has presidential aspirations and a significant following. 
The President-elect will need to distribute cabinet and other 
posts with an eye to keeping both of these players in his 
court, while also keeping sweet the non-PLD figures who 
backed him, notably former VP (1986-1994) Carlos Morales 
Troncoso, former chief executive (1963-65) Donald Reid 
Cabral, and former PRD president Hatuey De Camps. 
 
(SBU) The PLD executive will have to work until at least 2006 
with an opposition-dominated Congress. Of 32 senators, the 
PLD has only one (the well-regarded Jose Tomas Perez) while 
the PRD has 29 and the PRSC has 2.  In the 150-member lower 
house, the PLD with 42 deputies is better situated, but must 
contend with a PRD plurality of 73 and a substantial PRSC 
bloc of 35.  The PLD will have to build coalitions to pass 
urgently needed but politically unpalatable measures such as 
the tax reform bill promised to the IMF.  Doing so will put a 
premium on centrist policies, wide consultation, and 
transparent procedures in Congress. 
 
PRD - Mejia still in control 
- - - - -- - - - - - - - - - 
 
(C) President Mejia's PRD, victorious in the 1998, 2000, and 
2002 elections, is disappointed about its defeat.  Despite 
its astonishing mismanagement of the economy and the budget, 
it still managed to score a third of the vote.  Mejia remains 
its preeminent personality; the PRD claims the most 
grass-roots members of any party, and a majority of them 
apparently voted for Mejia.  He and his circle, the PPH 
(Proyecto Presidencial Hipolito), controlled 70-80 percent of 
the party machine going into the election.  The electoral 
defeat may have weakened his hold, but potential challengers 
in the PRD are weaker still.  He has promised to one of them, 
Vice President and Secretary of Education Milagros 
Ortiz-Bosch, the chair of a PRD convention in November to 
restructure the party and select new leaders.  Likely to go 
is the aging interim PRD president, former Director of 
Customs Vicente Sanchez Baret. 
(SBU) An overhaul is long overdue; for the past 20 years the 
structure has been directed from the top down, first by Pena 
Gomez and then by Mejia.  The nominating process from 
November to January was confused not only by rivalries but 
also by undertainty over the actual composition of the 
long-dormant PRD national executive committee.  Competing 
candidates held committee meetings with widely different 
lists of participants. 
 
(C) Last year Ortiz-Bosch had a large following in and 
outside the PRD and a reputation for principled behavior. 
She lost her place in line because of her on-again, off-again 
stance toward Mejia's re-election and her half-hearted, tardy 
endorsement.  By contrast, early rival former Secretary of 
Tourism Rafael "Fello" Subervi recognized the inevitability 
of Mejia and served as a strong, loud vice-presidential 
candidate.  With newly burnished party credentials, he has 
resurrected his presidential aspirations - - but Fello's 
sleazy reputation will hinder him in any future presidential 
race. 
 
(SBU) The telegenic Hatuey De Camps, removed as party 
president in February for his stubborn and voluble opposition 
to the President's re-election, endorsed Leonel Fernandez's 
candidacy.  He has never accepted his January removal as 
secretary of the "partido blanco," and his followers have 
 
SIPDIS 
camped out in the PRD party headquarters building since then. 
 In the week after the May 16 election, Hatuey had himself 
filmed by a press mob as he visited Pena Gomez's grave -- 
dressed in a white suit, carrying a white bouquet, with tears 
in his eyes and a catch in his voice. 
 
(SBU) A PRD national plenary May 23, attended by 1824 
delegates of a list of 2240, expelled De Camps and four other 
dissidents (including Congresswoman Felipa "Terremoto" Gomez, 
who had led the occupation of the party HQ). The vote was 
accompanied by a lengthy pandemonium in the hall, most of it 
directed against Hatuey with cries of "out with the traitor!" 
 Defiant, on June 5 Hatuey told the press that the PPH-led 
plenary could not remove him "by law or by force" and that 
his followers would continue to deny access to  the party 
headquarters. The PRD leadership is asking the courts to 
evict them.  De Camps will challenge Mejia for control of the 
PRD -- probably fruitlessly -- and then may found his own 
minor party and chip out a 5 percent or so share of the PRD 
base. 
 
(U) Mejia has made it clear that he intends to stay deeply 
involved in PRD politics.  He dismissed the notion bruited by 
some that he would get into the Senate via an arrangement 
with a resigning incumbent PRD senator. 
 
(SBU) The irony of Mejia's re-election attempt is that under 
the terms of the very Constitutional amendment that allowed 
him to run for re-election, he may now be barred from ever 
running again. According to the relevant provision of Article 
49, "The President of the Republic may seek a second, single 
consecutive constitutional term, not being allowed afterwards 
ever to seek the same office or that of the Vice Presidency 
of the Republic."  By undercutting Mejia's electoral future 
(absent creative interpretation by the Supreme Court or yet 
another constitutional amendment), this situation reduces 
Mejia's hold on long-term leadership in the party to force of 
personality and coherence of concept.  The first he has; the 
second he does not. 
 
(U) A further irony: because of the 2002 amendment Leonel 
Fernandez, who already served four years as president, will 
have the option of seeking re-election in 2008. 
 
PRSC - Life after Balaguer 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
 
(SBU) For the PRSC, the issue is not restructuring but 
survival.  In its fifth successive electoral defeat, the 
party saw its share of the vote slip to an all-time low. Many 
Reformistas followed the lead of former Vice President 
(1994-96) Jacinto Peynado and Morales Troncoso and defected 
to non-PRSC candidates.  Peynado is seriously, perhaps 
terminally ill, undergoing medical treatment in Miami. 
Morales Troncoso has come out of semi-retirement 
ostentatiously to accompany the PLD transition team. 
Defeated presidential candidate Estrella seems an unlikely 
reformer. 
 
(C) One thing is virtually certain: party president Rafael 
Bello Andino, a relic from the "palace circle" of former 
President Balaguer's last years, will be replaced for 
resisting calls for change from the Reformista rank and file. 
 
(C) The PRSC central executive directorate reviewed reform 
proposals on June 3 and scheduled a national party assembly 
for July 24 to "renew" the party and its officials. 
Estrella, his senior campaign adviser Victor Gomez Berges, 
and Federico "Quique" Antun Batlle -- an influential PRSC 
chief who gave late support to Estrella's presidential bid -- 
are possibles to replace Bello Andino.  Antun Batlle has told 
us the convention could begin the party's "revival or 
burial." 
 
(U)The party's long-term decline began in 1996, when Balaguer 
refused to support the Reformista candidate for president and 
instead backed the PLD's Fernandez in the second round; 
Fernandez once in office left the Reformistas out in the 
cold.  The aged Balaguer again abandoned his party in 2000 
and threw his support to Mejia (PRD). 
 
(C) To revive the party's fortunes, new leaders will need to 
exorcise not only Balaguer's ghost, but also his legacy of 
authoritarian, personalistic manipulation.  Antun Batlle has 
threatened privately to quit the party if it does not adopt 
more competitive, participatory internal procedures; he would 
then found a new movement designed to attract younger 
Dominicans. 
 
2. (U) Drafted by Bainbridge Cowell, Michael Meigs. 
 
3. (U) This report and others in our election and transition 
series can be read on the SIPRNET at 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/wha/santodomingo/ index.cfm along 
with extensive other current material. 
HERTELL