(CORRECTED COPY) DOMINICAN ELECTIONS NO. 28:

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 SANTO DOMINGO 001723

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE

STATE FOR WHA 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

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV DR
SUBJECT: (CORRECTED COPY) DOMINICAN ELECTIONS NO. 28:
RUNNING PAST ONE ANOTHER

REF: SANTO DOMINGO 0171


1. (SBU) This is the 28th in our series on the Dominican
presidential elections:

Election Series #28:

Running Past One Another: Styles of the Leading Candidates

There will almost certainly be no debate between Hipolito
Mejia and Leonel Fernandez, even though civic organizations
and commentators seized upon the Ambassador's February 25
proposal. Caught by journalists after a ceremony, Mejia said
he would "consider" the idea. PLD Secretary General Reynaldo
Pared Perez said that Fernandez wouldn,t think of debating
someone with less than 20 percent support (spiking Mejia with
the very gibe Mejia used in a dismissive reference to "that
ex-president with 18 or 20 points" in February 2002).

Fernandez, with more than 60 percent in polls since late
2003, has no reason to take the risk of a direct
confrontation. The styles of the two candidates are entirely
different. And an encounter between Mejia and Fernandez
would not be a debate in the usual sense. It would be closer
to a verbal mugging of Fernandez than a discussion of
substance.

The Farmer from Gurabo

Hipolito Mejia is caustic, jocular, colloquial and direct.
His target is the average Dominican - - farmers, shopkeepers,
laborers, and the unemployed. Mejia is smart but not
particularly well educated or focused in his discourse. He
and his faction of the PRD are strongest outside the cities.
Mejia campaigns by going to the provinces to deliver public
works - - in late 2003 he showed the Ambassador a thick
binder of small projects stopped for lack of funds. The
December and January disbursements from the InterAmerican
Development Bank and World Bank provided the money for the
administration to finish many of these, at least to a point
where they could be inaugurated. At these events Mejia
appears in the crowds, outdoors, wearing a guayabera shirt
and often a straw hat, looking very much like a farmer.
Mejia has largely united the party after the fights over
re-election and leadership, and he is playing to place
strongly enough to deprive Fernandez of a majority and push
the election into a second round.

Mejia,s language is vigorous and colorful - - so remarkable
that it is the subject to a new academic study: "The
Colloquial Speech of Hipolito Mejia: Study of an Idiolect."
Most of the 248-page book is devoted to vocabulary and
expressions from Mejia,s public utterances, analyzed in
context, meaning, significance and style. The listing begins
in 1999 with a transcription of candidate Mejia,s own
explanation of the colloquialism, "I,ve got him by the
pichirri":

"The pichirri is the part, the spot where you grab a hen or
a rooster - - if you press on it there, you dominate it
entirely, so then, referring to a candidate like him (the
PLD,s Danilo Medina) who is not the only one out there,
since Dr. Balaguer is there and you can,t grab him by the
pichirri, since he,s a smart man - - definitely though,
as for this gentleman (Medina),I have him by the pichirri,
because he can,t budge." (An anecdote not in the book:
when journalists threw the expression at Fernandez, who grew
up in New York, they got a blank look: "What is a pichirri?")

Mejia,s invective has often been directed at Fernandez and
at his PLD "comesolos" (selfish, exclusive enjoyers of
privilege who dine alone). Mejia aggressively projects tubby
manliness (hombria) and dismisses Fernandez as ineffectual
and even effeminate. His style, says one editor, is the
"politics of cockfighting, of machos who impose themselves at
any cost, with lethal barbs and spurs." Last October after an
interview with international news channel Univisin, the
cameras, still rolling, caught Mejia making crude jokes about
Fernandez,s sexuality. And Mejia hammers away, calling the
PLD privileged moneyed "little gentlemen" (senoritos) out to
exploit the country for themselves. Mejia now appears every
Sunday evening on the interview program "Una Vez a la
Semana"8 on a government channel, expostulating in a style
summarized on March 15 by El Caribe newspaper: "Once again he
slammed into speculators and his PLD opponent Leonel
Fernandez, reminding viewers that Fernandez worked and got
paid by one of the banks that failed in the financial sector.
In the style customary for his public comments, the
President,s declarations leaped from one theme to another
without stopping to explain details."

In short, Mejia is pugnacious, unpredictable and emotive, a
larger than life caricature of the common Dominican man -- in
media terms, "hot."

The Foundation Man

Leonel Fernandez raises excitement at meetings across the
country but more for his aura of the coming conqueror than
for his personal style or presence. Since leaving office in
2000 Fernandez has presided over the Global Foundation for
Economic Development (see www.funglode.org),a vehicle
endowed for him by wealthy supporters. He has traveled
widely and participated in many ceremonial and academic
events in the United States and in Europe. Fernandez is the
man in the suit, with a thoughtful look on his face and a
grimace of concern at the plight of the country.

The PLD is marketing Fernandez with lots of display media
("Leonel is coming back!" with smiling picture, purple
background evoking the PLD colors and a Dominican flag - -
used so frequently that PRD grumblers write about
inappropriate exploitation of national symbols). This past
week the PLD was running an hour-long docu-program on
national television at least once a day. Fernandez is
sitting on the verandah of a clearly upper class residence,
conducting "town meeting" style Qs and As with twenty or so
concerned Dominicans. The scene could be in Spain, except
for the Dominican accents - - all the attentive participants,
men and women, are white professionals in a mixed-race
population. The only glimpse of a dark face is that of a
waiter in a white jacket disappearing through a doorway.
Fernandez, the most criollo-looking one on screen, speaks
quietly, fluently and in polysyllables of re-establishing
business confidence to attract flight capital back to the
country, tax reform, the quasi-fiscal deficit, debt
renegotiation, seeking international assistance for Haiti,
moving toward higher value-added in manufacturing, enforcing
migration laws, using the U.S. "third border" initiative to
exploit the country,s strategic position, the curative and
preventive functions of national health policy, strengthening
the judiciary, re-privatization of electricity distribution
companies, investing in public works, stabilizing the
exchange rate, and the need for quality leadership, vision,
and a frank dialogue on the medium and long term. In other
words, Fernandez is a pat, well-spoken policy wonk, cozy with
the well off. He mentions Mejia,s administration almost with
regret, with passing comments about "irresponsible" fiscal
policy, media manipulation and "confusion" in leadership.
Fernandez has no surprising ideas but he doesn,t make any
clearly unachievable promises, either. In media terms his is
a "cool" presence.

The docu-program breaks three times to present the same two
very slick one-minute political ads. The first shows
cartoonish vignettes of economic distress with live actors
and special effects, with close-ups of Leonel showing silent
concern. The second is a lively basketball game where the
white-jerseyed "Nation" is losing badly to the black-jerseyed
"Crisis" team, which is using fouls and intimidation - -
until Leonel comes striding into the gym (assured, contained
and in a suit) to coach the "Nation" back to victory. This
is a funny, fast and appealing spot - - and on screen the
cheering fans, loving it, actually look Dominican.

Neither candidate has yet published a campaign platform.

The Puzzle of the Polls

Polls in October, January and February consistently showed
Fernandez with better than 60 percent of the prospective
vote. In our view those votes are not solidly Leonel,s - -
many of them are votes for "anything but this current
economic misery." Fernandez will need to work hard to keep a
convincing lead, since Mejia now has sufficient international
funding to keep the electricity sector going and to splash
out modest but numerous public works projects. Mejia is
directing all his effort to winning back the man in the
street and the family in the countryside, the traditional
supporters of the PRD. On March 14 Mejia asserted that the
PRD had regained the lead in 20 of 22 provinces. If the
election goes to a second round, Mejia will have an
additional 45 days to assemble a coalition -- probably
including elements of the third big party, the PRSC.

At this point it looks like about an even chance for Leonel
to win outright on May 16. He has not been very effective or
directed in communicating the message that even for the
PRD,s base he offers better hopes than Mejia does. Leonel
hasn,t yet got Mejia by the pichirri.


2. (U) Drafted by Michael Meigs.


3. (U) This report and the rest of our elections series are
available on our SIPRNET site
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/wha/santodomingo/ along with
other material.

KUBISKE