DOMINICAN POLITICS III #12: FERNANDEZ AT HIS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SANTO DOMINGO 003644 SIPDIS SIPDIS STATE FOR WHA, WHA/CAR, INR/IAA; USSOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD; TREASURY FOR OASIA-JLEVINE; DEPT PASS USDA FOR FAS; USDOC FOR 4322/ITA/MAC/WH/CARIBBEAN BASIN DIVISION; USDOC FOR 3134/ITA/USFCS/RD/WH; DHS FOR CIS-CARLOS ITURREGUI E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/04/2026 TAGS: DR PGOV PREL SUBJECT: DOMINICAN POLITICS III #12: FERNANDEZ AT HIS FAIL-SAFE POINT Classified By: DCM Roland BUllen, Reasons 1.4(b),(d) ¶1. (U) This is the twelfth cable in our series on Dominican politics in the third year of the administration of President Leonel Fernandez. Dominican Politics III, #12: Leonel Fernandez at the Fail-Safe Point (SBU) A president who won in 2004 with 57 percent of the vote and enjoyed 70 percent figures in the polls earlier this year finds himself faced with a powerful insurrection within his party, just as his cautious, consensus-seeking management style is giving the general impression that he can,t get much done. (C) The fail-safe point for President Fernandez arrived a lot earlier than he expected. He told the Ambassador when he was elected, &Being president will be fun,8 and this past June he estimated that he had &about a year8 before presidential politicking would impede his principal projects, revealed to be constitutional reform and the completion of the first line of the Santo Domingo Metro by the May, 2008 presidential election. Insurrection (C) The first warning of a possible turning point was the November 8 decision of presidential chief of staff Danilo Medina to resign in order to pursue the PLD presidential election. In contrast to the cerebral, eloquent and solitary Fernandez, Danilo Medina is canny, personable, and trusted by many leaders of the PLD. Nearly 2/3 of the PLD,s 92 congressional representatives responded to the opportunity in early November to huddle with Danilo; a trip to the second city of Santiago gathered a similarly strong group to his side. (C) Apprehensive about a stampede, perpetual campaign manager for Fernandez Commerce and Industry Minister Javier Garcia Fernandez is organizing counter-rallies &to explore the situation for presidential re-election.8 (C) Decisions about candidacies are initiated in the 24-member Political Committee of the party, presided by Fernandez. It met weekly while in opposition and in the early months of the administration, but its functions have gradually subsumed by the PLD government. This has especially been the case since the 2006 congressional elections, in which Secretary General Reinaldo Pared Perez was elected Senator and then in August became president of the Senate. (SBU) Pared Perez told the press over the weekend that after discussion with him, President Fernandez approved the convening of the Political Committee this week (Dec. 4-8). PLD rules empower the Committee to set the calendar for the 400-member Central Committee to choose candidates. Danilo Medina told the Ambassador on November 30 that any individual supported by at least 33 percent of the Central Committee is proposed to a primary vote by the general membership of the party -- currently more than one million individuals. And Medina said he is confident that he will win the nomination through this process. (SBU) The apparent PLD disarray is roiling just as the rival PRD appears to be rolling inexorably toward the choice on January 7 of Miguel Vargas Maldonado as its candidate. With his comments appearing daily in the newspapers, Vargas already has the status of de facto PRD leader. He is the picture of managerial competence and assurance Managing Your Way Out of a Paper Bag (C) Highlighted by this sequence of events are the persistent shortcomings of Fernandez,s familiar operating style of dialogue, temporizing, and the search for consensus. This president is reluctant, perhaps afraid, to exert direct authority, probably because he knows that few in his party and fewer in his government are bound to him by ties of personal loyalty. (C) His 2004 mandate arose directly from the fact that he was NOT Mejia. He rode that advantage to victory and his team,s scrupulous adherence to IMF prescriptions re-established business confidence. The recovery -- or, perhaps, the halt of the vertiginous erosion of the economy -- won him increased popularity, achieving a score of around 70 percent early in 2006. The recent Gallup poll puts that at just above 50 percent and Danilo Medina asserts that it has fallen further. (C) But Fernandez is no manager. The only autonomous initiative persistently pursued by his administration at his initiative has been the Santo Domingo Metro, a thoroughly dubious undertaking. Uncharacteristically paying little heed to persistent criticism of his &train to happiness,8 Fernandez has given manager Diandino Pena the authority and resources to make direct negotiations for construction. Pena has gone through motions to pretend that the bidding was open, but has done it in such a rushed manner that acquisitions have been carried out in the familiar Dominican style of directly negotiated contracts essentially without competition. (C) Other big and important endeavors have suffered from Fernandez,s inattention or ineffectiveness with his subordinates: - - (C) As we mentioned in the bio of him a year ago, Fernandez usually meets with the U.S. ambassador and USG callers with no Dominican government staff member present. We assume that he does the same with other visitors, thereby depriving his executive support staff of knowledge of ongoing issues and any decisions made during those calls. By contrast, he participates avidly and repeatedly in large open-forum proceedings on issues, where the large number of participants assures virtual impossibility of consensus. - - (C) Fernandez has insisted on the importance of confronting globalization with the free trade agreement DR-CAFTA - - but by failing to insist with his Commerce Minister and by failing to remain engaged, he has in effect allowed the implementation date to roll from January 1, 2006, to July 1, 2006, to &by at least August8 to December 1 to, now, perhaps January 1. He certainly senses deep, ongoing resentment of DR-CAFTA in the agricultural sector and among the unethical, deep-pocketed pharmaceutical sector of gray-market importers and unlicensed counterfeiters. His response has been lip service to a concerned U.S. ambassador (&We must have implementation by January 1 or it will be a disaster8) but little direct engagement. - - (C) The tax reform required by the IMF has been managed into a political disaster for the administration. Fernandez and presidential Technical Secretary Montas sprang it on the Dominican public in a press conference in Washington on October 26 but gave no details. The strong reaction to a third fiscal package was not quelled by Fernandez,s speech blaming the previous Congress. Details of the package have been floated and withdrawn several times; the President has not done a very good job of assigning blame to the IMF, especially with the private sector and opposition strongly asserting that the government should cut expenses, instead. Now Fernandez will make a second speech to the nation this week on the content of the package. - - (C) The December 1 settlement with the country,s leading telecoms company, Verizon Dominicana, concerning the sale of its operations to Mexico,s Carlos Slim and America Movil, provides the government a one-off bonus of US $170 million that Verizon asserts was never due in the first place. Though the settlement is a fiscal coup for Fernandez and his aggressive Internal Revenue Chief Juan Hernandez, it provides tax reform opponents further reason to call the package unnecessary, at least for this year. Fernandez told the country that the government was responding to the request of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice (who did, in fact, mention the subject in passing when she received Fernandez on October 26). He insisted to the Ambassador that a &sine qua non8 of acceptance of the proposed agreement was that Washington send a USG observer, preferably from the U.S. Treasury. In the event, he got the Department of State desk officer as his cover. Comment has been mixed, with some asking why the government was eluding a settlement by its own courts in this matter. Time to Manage (C) The PLD is dividing rapidly into rival camps. The struggle will be at the core Political Committee and Central Committee. After engaging in an exercise in internal democracy, the leadership may be capable of uniting behind the candidate who wins in a primary with participation of hundreds of thousands of new party members. (C) A major undecided point is how far Fernandez and his closest supporters are willing to carry the internal contest. Medina looks very strong within the party, and he is insisting very vigorously that &re-electionism8 is dangerous for Dominican democracy. If Medina,s partisans gain further obvious advantage, it is possible that the non-confrontational Fernandez might eventually decide that the game is no longer worth the strife. We are not predicting a Fernandez withdrawal, but we do think that the possibility cannot be dismissed out of hand. - - Drafted by Michael Meigs ¶2. (U) This report and extensive other material can be consulted on our SIPRNET site, http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/wha/santodomingo/ BULLEN