DOMINICAN POLITICS #20: OPPOSITION PRD STRUGGLES

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 SANTO DOMINGO 001929

SIPDIS

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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