DOMINICAN TRANSITION #2: POLITICAL PARTIES RE-GROUP

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