DOMINICAN ELECTIONS #48: SCENESETTER FOR MAY 16

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 SANTO DOMINGO 002925 SIPDIS SENSITIVE STATE FOR WHA AND DRL;NSC FOR SHANNON AND MADISON LABOR FOR ILAB; USCINCSO ALSO FOR POLAD;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: DOMINICAN ELECTIONS #48: SCENESETTER FOR MAY 16 PRESIDENTIAL VOTE ¶1. (SBU) Following is number 48 in our Dominican elections series: Scenesetter for May 16 Presidential Vote Celebrations and Movement Santo Domingo was the scene on successive days this week of tumultuous street rallies for the three major presidential candidates. The atmosphere was that of a fiesta, appropriate for a country that usually turns in a voter participation level of between 75 and 80 percent. By law, campaign activities end on Friday, May 14. The country is on election holiday from midday, Saturday, May 15, through Monday, May 17. Saturday will be a day of extensive movement, as many city dwellers return to their places of origin. International observers will be dispersing across the country, as well, including some of the 53 volunteers from the U.S. Embassy community, duly accredited by the Central Electoral Board (JCE) through the OAS observer mission. Election material has been delivered to municipal electoral boards during the week, apparently without major incident. Security is provided for the materials, for 134 municipal boards, and for 12,000 voting places by the Electoral Police, a specially constituted body of some 34,000 police and armed forces personnel reporting through an independent chain of command directly to the president of the JCE Luis Arias. (More than 100 actively serving flag-rank military officers have signed a declaration that they will support the decisions of the JCE ) more a commentary on the country,s pre-election nerves than on the orientation of the military.) Where We,ll Be All 53 Embassy and American community OAS-affiliated observers received 3 hours of training earlier this week and will work in close consultation with OAS regional coordinators. Some will participate in the OAS "quick count," which entails only phoning in the results of the selected voting place to the OAS office in Santo Domingo. Twenty will work outside Santo Domingo. All are to be present at the 6:00 a.m. opening of a pre-selected voting place, to circulate for observation in the city throughout the day, to make contact with the municipal election board, to return to the pre-selected voting place to witness the count, to accompany the materials and officials to the municipal board and to remain as observer while municipal results are transmitted to the JCE computer center in Santo Domingo. They will use OAS forms and reporting channels to document their visits and any irregularities encountered; any major irregularities or disruptions are to be reported by cell phone to one of the senior OAS observers. An Embassy "Election Coordination Central" will function at the DCM residence with a staff ranging from two to six persons. Embassy observers will telephone regularly throughout Sunday. Personnel from the Defense Attache Office and the Military Assistance and Advisory Group will be stationed at the JCE, at the armed forces HQ, and at Police HQ throughout the day. The Ambassador and Mrs. Hertell will carry out a day-long program of visits to polling stations, the JCE, and the USAID-funded NGO Participacion Ciudadana. Canadian, Dutch and EU ambassadors have accepted their invitation to join this program. Prospects Passions have been high this week and candidates have presented themselves as larger than life (for example, at his May 12 closing rally President Mejia declared to followers that he has now moved into first place). There have been charges and counter-charges among the parties about plans to breach the rules, commit fraud, or resort to violence or premature declarations. Our expectation is that the Saturday "cooling off" day and the long Sunday voting process (described below) will help to cool things down. The process will be well monitored by observers - - some 250 from abroad, 6,500 from Participacion Ciudadana, and tens of thousands from the political parties. Electoral officials and electoral police have been appropriately trained.It is our expectation that the JCE will announce a clear result by midnight. Leonel Fernandez goes into the election with a long trail of favorable poll numbers, the most reputable and recent of which credit him with around 54-59 percent of the intentions of the electorate. Even so, Mejia has surged over past weeks to 27-30 percent, in no small part due to his open-handed caudillo pork-barrel approach to politics. Opinions in the Embassy are divided - - if we were to make a single abstracted prediction, it would probably reduce to a 50-50 chance for a second round. Whichever way it goes, we will be advising the Department via e-mail on Sunday night. Events on Election Day and on the Monday holiday will shape our decision on further immediate reporting. When Will We Know? JCE President Luis Arias has cautioned us that the wait may be long but that he hopes to make the first call as early as 10 p.m. Others are less optimistic. Regulations issued by the JCE in 1996 prohibit the announcement of any results or projections before the JCE makes its count public. The results of "quick counts" will be compiled by Participacion Ciudadana (approximately an 8 percent sample, expected to be within 0.1 percent of the final result) and by the OAS (30 voting stations, expected to be within 1.5 percent of the final result). Each organization will deliver the result to the JCE in a sealed envelope. Political parties will make their own counts (thus, there is considerable tension among them over the prospect of early or mistaken celebrations). The Association of Young Entrepreneurs (ANJE) announced its intention to do "exit polling" with the assistance of the Gallup Organization, an initiative that some have decried as intrusive. ANJE says that it will observe the rules prohibiting early release. The wait for election returns will depend upon the number of irregularities and challenges and would be affected by any major disruption of the process. The JCE program for international observers (primarily the representatives of other national electoral authorities) features a visit to the JCE at 10 p.m. with a press event at 10:30 )but this event may feature only commentary, without announcement of returns. For the Record: The Voting Process Electoral officials for each of the polling stations ("colegios electorales" or voting tables) meet at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday, May 16, to be identified, registered, and sworn in by the presidents of the colegios. Delegates of the political parties and of the civic organization "Participacion Ciudadana" present at most colegios will present their credentials and will be registered. Following opening and inspection of the equipment and materials, polls will open at 6 a.m. Voters receive numbers in the order of their arrival and line up, with men and women in different queues. A redrawing of the voting registers last year has reduced the maximum number of voters per booth to 400 from the previous 600. A voter presents his or her national identity card ("cedula") for verification. Both the voter roll and the cedula feature a photo. The voter receives a single-sheet ballot featuring the parties and photos of their candidates (parties are further identified by their traditional colors; a number of minor parties are formally allied to major candidates and feature those photos). The voter retires behind a cardboard screen to mark the ballot, then folds it in four and walks out to deposit it in the sealed ballot box. Representatives of political parties may challenge individuals as not corresponding to the registered voter or for irregularities; in these cases, the challenged ballot is sealed and set apart for adjudication of the complaint. Voters whose names do not appear on the rolls are checked against the list of ineligible voters first; their names are then checked against the general roll and if appropriate they are directed to the correct voting place. Voting continues throughout the day. Polls close at 6 p.m. and anyone in the queue at that time is allowed to vote. Polling officials and registered observers are present for the vote count. Ballots are emptied onto a table. They are counted and the result is compared with the count of voters who passed through the polling station. Discrepancies are recorded; if the ballot box contains more ballots than the number who voted, the incident is recorded and by random selection a number of ballots are removed to reduce the count to the appropriate number. In such a case, removed ballots are burned. A voting official then opens ballots one by one, displaying each one to those present. He announces the result, which is tallied by two other officials on separate displays. After all are counted, the tallies are compared. If necessary, discrepancies are resolved. Vote totals are written on a report form, countersigned by all present and then covered with transparent adhesive. Ballots, tally sheets and report are sealed in a special bag and other materials are packed and sealed. All are given into the custody of the assigned member of the Electoral Police, who proceeds with voting officials to the municipal board. At the municipal board the materials are received, opened and receipted and voting officials queue to feed the report form into a scanner for electronic encrypted transmission to the JCE,s computer center in Santo Domingo, where nationwide returns are tallied. (This is a new procedure, but since the OAS observer team convinced the JCE to carry out several test runs of the scanning procedures and the computer count, the system is expected to perform adequately.) ¶2. (U) Drafted by Michael Meigs. ¶3. (U) This report and others in our series are available on our SIPNET site at http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/wha/santodomingo/ along with extensive other material. HERTELL