US embassy cable - 05SANTODOMINGO1929

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 SANTO DOMINGO 001929 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
STATE FOR WHA/CAR, NSC FOR SHANNON AND MADISON;LABOR FOR 
ILAB; USCINCSO ALSO FOR POLAD; TREASURY FOR OASIA-LCARTER 
USDOC FOR 4322/ITA/MAC/WH/CARIBBEAN BASIN DIVISION 
USDOC FOR 3134/ITA/USFCS/RD/WH; DHS FOR CIS-CARLOS ITURREGUI 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV, KCOR, DR 
SUBJECT: DOMINICAN POLITICS #20: OPPOSITION PRD STRUGGLES 
FOR A COMEBACK 
 
REF: A. SANTO DOMINGO 1557 
 
     B. SANTO DOMINGO 1304 
 
1. (SBU) This is #20 in our current series on politics in the 
Dominican Republic: 
 
 
The Opposition PRD Struggles for a Comeback 
 
The Great Revival 
- - - - - - - - - 
 
The main opposition Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), tied 
up in factional and personal recriminations since losing 
office last year, is seeking to revive itself as an 
alternative.  Mindful of the requirement for a November 
primary to select candidates for congressional and municipal 
elections next year, after repeated postponements the PRD 
plans an "ordinary convention" (national vote), tentatively 
in May, to elect new party leadership.  As the organizing 
committee rushes to complete a voter registration list, some 
party veterans want to postpone, because many PRD members are 
still demoralized and might stay home.  The "ordinary 
convention" will be the first since 1991, a stark reminder of 
the PRD's autocratic and clientelistic methods over the 
years.  Rules revised this year allow the PRD rank and file 
to choose from a throng of candidates a party president, 
secretary general, secretary of organization, and other 
 
SIPDIS 
officials down to the local level -- some 50,000 in all. 
 
Cacophony in Congress 
- - - - - - - - - - - 
 
The new PRD leaders will face an immediate task: to convert 
"a swarm of crickets" (as one cynic put it) into a 
disciplined opposition to President Fernandez,s 
administration.  Freelancing PRD lawmakers have ignored the 
party, defied instructions from party president Vicente 
Sanchez Baret, and accused each other of corruption.  Senate 
President Andres Bautista on three occasions failed to 
assemble a quorum, once last November in the struggle to 
repeal a CAFTA-unfriendly tax, and recently because his 
no-show PRD colleagues were protesting the government's 
investigations of corruption in the previous (PRD) 
administration. House of Representatives President Alfredo 
Pacheco (PRD) has suggested that Senator Alejandro Santos 
(PRD), chairman of the Senate industry and trade committee, 
might be subverting CAFTA-DR ratification, a national 
priority. 
 
From February 22 to March 29 PRD senators prevented votes on 
government proposals and delayed passage of crucial financial 
measures.  In late March and early April they finally passed 
these bills of urgent national interest, but critics have 
been demanding more responsible behavior.  The PRD blocs in 
both houses sit squarely astride Fernandez's path to 
obtaining essential legislation for fundamental tax reform 
and for next year,s budget.  . 
 
From Values to Vices 
- - - - - - - - - - - 
 
To prepare for elections in 2006 and 2008, the PRD will have 
to reinvent itself.  A party that for decades championed 
social democratic values and social justice is more than ever 
viewed as devoid of ideals,and energized only by its 
leaders, scramble for personal, factional, and financial 
gain.  Mejia,s bulldozer drive for re-election in 2004, 
against many in his party, is emblematic and still resented. 
The party,s moral credentials have sunk almost as low as 
when, in the late 1980s, President Balaguer (PRSC) prosecuted 
and imprisoned former President Jorge Blanco (PRD) for 
corruption.  Investigations of alleged wrongdoing in the 
Mejia administration (2000-2004) prompt many Dominicans to 
dismiss the last four years as the worst ever in the 
country's democratic political history.  Memories dim; the 
wholesale abuses in PRD governments from 1978 to 1986 were 
worse. 
 
Fernandez's prosecutors are probing the previous 
administration's ties with drug trafficker Quirino Paulino 
drug and other questionable activities.  Last month they 
seized documents from a former under secretary of the 
Environment Ministry alleged to have supervised construction 
of Mejia,s spacious new mountain home in Jarabacoa, complete 
with extensive greenhouses.  Those greenhouses are said to 
have been among at least 51 that were distributed to 
government officials or family members, including former 
agricultural secretary Eligio Jaquez, of a total of 200 
greenhouses that the government had acquired with a Spanish 
loan.  One contact says that when the builders purchased 
supplies from a PRSC-affiliated hardware store, instead of 
from three PRD-affiliated ones, the local PRD organization 
boycotted the election, handing Fernandez a victory in that 
province.  A recent cartoon in Listin diario comments, "For 
Hipolito,s house in Jarabacoa to have cost 6 million pesos 
(USD 210,000), they must have had Mandrake the Magician as 
the engineer...." 
 
Fractured but Formidable 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - 
 
Split by ambition and tarnished by scandal, the PRD still has 
formidable resources.  It controls Congress, with 28 of 32 
senators and at least 63 of 150 deputies. The ruling PLD, by 
contrast, has only 1 senator and 42 deputies.  It controls 
about 115 of 135 municipalities.  And it has the country,s 
most extensive grass-roots party organization, far larger 
than that of the PLD.  PRD leaders believe this base will 
enable the party to retain many Congressional seats after 
2006 -- by mobilizing the local vote -- even if it loses some 
of them.  In 2004, in the poorest presidential election 
performance ever by the PRD, it still got 1.2 million votes 
or 34 percent of the total -- much higher than the 24 percent 
won by the PLD runner-up in the 2000 presidential race. 
 
More than two-thirds of PRD members polled late last year 
said they wanted new, more responsive, more transparent, less 
corrupt leadership.  A party assembly in November approved 
more than 200 revisions to the PRD statutes.  the revisions 
explictly ban PRD candidates from seeking re-election.  They 
introduce for the first time a direct, nationwide vote of the 
party,s registered members to select party officers, 
replacing the horse-trading by delegates  at PRD conventions. 
 
 
Mobilizing those members will not be easy.  Some party 
organizers fear that a poorly prepared vote will attract as 
few as 150,000 participants, de-legitimizing the results.  A 
recent poll estimated support for the PRD to have sunk to 10 
percent of the electorate.  The incoming administration fired 
as many as 300,000 public employees appointed by Mejia, of a 
total government workforce of 400,000.  Many of those PRD 
members and their families, now without regular employment or 
income in a job-scarce economy, are dejected and disengaged. 
 
Wanted:  A Few Good Leaders 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
Organizational fixes alone will not solve the PRD,s 
leadership problem.  Charisma still counts and is in short 
supply in today,s PRD.  A cartoon shows a scanning from the 
dome of the national palace: "Sir, no invaders on the coast. 
From here no sign of any opposition leader worthy of note." 
It is symptomatic that Mejia (Ref A) retains more popularity 
in the party than anyone else -- and not simply because of 
gratitude for former presidential largesse.  His 
down-to-earth country manner, disparaged by others in the PRD 
elite, has wide appeal among more modest Dominicans.  Beyond 
him, there are no stars.  When expelled former PRD president 
Hatuey De Camps quit the PRD last month to found a new rival 
party, he deprived the PRD of its most forceful populist 
orator (Ref B). 
 
At least half a dozen candidates are jostling for the PRD 
presidency.  The more notable contenders: 
 
Emmanuel Esquea, former party president (1998-99) and palace 
legal adviser to former President Jorge Blanco (1982-86), 
repeatedly turned down offers of senior jobs under Mejia.  A 
party elder, whom some see as rigidly legalistic and too 
close to powerful business interests. 
 
Former Attorney General Virgilio Bello Rosa (2000-02) 
resigned over abuses in the Meja administration and has 
eloquently urged reforms, but is not well known outside legal 
circles.  Both have concentrated their fire on the PRD's 
internal faults, not on the Fernndez administration. 
 
Senator Ramon Alburquerque, influential among his 
congressional colleagues, has on several occasions delayed or 
amended bills proposed by the administration.  Another grey 
head. 
 
Former culture minister under Mejia (2000-2004) Tony Raful, a 
poet and writer who is currently the PRD,s executive vice 
president, serves as party spokesman and liaison among the 
various factions.  His colleagues privately fault him for 
lacking gravitas (in a local Spanish expression, "he has no 
claws"). 
 
The Jorge Clan vs. the Mafia 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
 
To replace PRD Secretary General Rafael "Fello" Subervi, the 
young former telecommunications chief Orlando Jorge Mera has 
become the preferred candidate of the party elite, thanks in 
part to his still-influential father, former president Jorge 
Blanco.  An unobjectionable technocrat, Jorge Mera airs his 
bland opinions regularly in news columns and on TV.  He 
stands out against the less savory competition, especially 
Mejia,s former legal adviser Guido Gomez Mazara, generally 
disliked for his arrogance, unpredictability, and links to 
organized crime.  Some warn of a possible alliance between 
Gomez and another unscrupulous candidate -- backed by Subervi 
-- who together might defeat Jorge Mera. 
 
Faded Glories 
- - - - - - - 
 
The only known PRD aspirants to the nation,s presidency in 
2008 are faded, jaded, distrusted, or treading carefully: 
 
Former Vice President Milagros Ortiz-Bosch, having lost many 
previous supporters by her contradictory and dilatory 
behavior in the 2004 election, is trying to redeem herself as 
chair of the "ordinary convention" organizing committee. One 
PRD insider recently dismissed her as "a plastic star." 
 
PRD Secretary General Subervi, machine politician 
extraordinaire, is tinged with past corruption.  Rumor has it 
that he is conspiring with Mejia,s former public works 
minister, wealthy businessman Miguel Vargas Maldonado, to 
advance Vargas,s own presidential aspirations. 
 
For now former president Mejia, despite his periodic public 
appearances and criticisms of Fernandez, is staying close to 
the bunker as his close associates dodge incoming scandals. 
He is constitutionally barred from mounting a third 
presidential campaign.  Even so, many in the PRD -- including 
some of those who blame him for the party,s current troubles 
-- long for his return.  They remember the truculent, folksy, 
quick-witted personality who grabbed the reins after the 
death of the legendary Jose Francisco Pena Gomez and spurred 
them on to victory five years ago.  Admirers say Hipolito may 
be the only figure capable of sorting out the PRD,s 
leadership mess, anointing a successor to run the party, and 
grooming another to carry its standard in the 2008 
presidential election. 
 
2. (U) Drafted by Bainbridge Cowell. 
 
3. (U) This piece and others in our series can be consulted 
on our classified SIPRNET site 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/wha/santodomingo/  along with 
extensive other material. 
MINIMIZE CONSIDERED 
HERTELL