Welcome to Washington, Mr. Dominican
President, Hipólito Mejía
• A once admirable leader
grows increasingly unaccountable, even to those closest to him in
the day-to-day running of the government.
• Mejía yields
to the tough talk of the U.S. ambassador by joining the ‘coalition
of the willing’ in the war in Iraq, against the wishes of his
own foreign minister, who subsequently resigned.
• Mejía announces
his intention to seek re-election, going against his own declarations
condemning the ‘continuismo’ of former Dominican leaders.
The announcement has shaken his own political party, as well as the
island nation, whose Constitution forbids running for a consecutive
second term.
• Efforts at social development
and economic recovery after 9/11 have proven disappointing, and his
powerful mandate from his landslide victory in 2000 is being frittered
away. Protests over increased electricity bills sent out by the foreign
owners of power plants which were privatized by his predecessor, as
well as frequent power outages have filled the streets of Santo Domingo
in recent months.
• Attacks are coming
from all sides as President Mejía retrenches and plans for
budgetary austerity and strengthening free trade links to the U.S.
A President Who Has
Gone Astray
Head and shoulders above any
recent leader of the country, nevertheless things have not gone very
well for president Hipólito Mejía, who will be meeting
with President Bush at the White House tomorrow. What began as a season
of hope for his nation due to his impeccable credentials as former
minister of agriculture, is rapidly becoming grounds for despair.
In March, when the country was pressed into joining the ‘coalition
of the willing’ by the importunings of the U.S. ambassador in
Santo Domingo, Mejía’s foreign minister, Hugo Tolentino
Dipp, dramatically resigned in order to register his own opposition
to the war. Rather than stand by Tolentino, Mejía replaced
him with Frank Guerrero Pratts, the central bank chief – a man
who already had been failing to deal effectively with the country’s
economic downturn. Pratts undoubtedly relished the opportunity to
abdicate his position in finance, as the popular resentment against
the Mejía administration and the public’s unhappiness
over the flagging economy was only just beginning to ferment.
Already hurt by 9/11, the country’s
tourism industry was dealt a killer blow by the Iraq war. This reflected
a similar situation throughout the Caribbean, which witnessed a marked
drop in air flights and the downward plunge of the region’s
all-important tourist industry. In the Dominican Republic, the fall
off in visitors helped bring about a loss of $450 million in revenues
between September 2001 and December 2002. This shortfall, coupled
with the increasingly frequent blackouts (while twenty percent increases
in power bills to the average consumer have not been able to hold
the line), has added to the already widespread popular dissent against
the government. When Mejía introduced his unpopular economic
recovery package, which withdrew millions of dollars from circulation
and vowed to limit government expenditures, he completed a 180-degree
turn from the optimism and calls for change featured in his campaign
speeches, which outlined far-reaching social programs funded by increased
taxes and fuel surcharges.
Mejía then came forth
with his explosive announcement of April 27 revealing his intentions
to seek another term in 2004, thereby reneging on the promise he had
made in his campaign, which he had reiterated as recently as last
July. This alienated not only the island’s populace but members
of his own party as well. What the island needs is not another four-year
term of mediocre performance, but a brilliant performance that will
end next year with his stepping down a revered figure.
Caught Up In Scandal?
After criticizing the free-market
policies of former president Leonel Fernandez Reyna early on, President
Mejía reversed himself and proceeded to spearhead an initiative
which included a plan to create a U.S.-controlled free trade zone
along the Dominican-Haiti border as a part of the Debt for Development
Program backed by the Inter-American Development Bank. The initiative
is part of what is known as the Dominican-Haitian Investment Funds’
Bilateral Holding Corporation, or the “Hispaniola Fund.”
Historically, free trade zones have offered little tolerance for the
role of worker organizations and have been notorious for tolerating
poor working conditions. When a coalition of U.S. student groups last
month successfully lobbied Reebok and Nike to increase the wages and
improve workers’ conditions in one of the Dominican Republic’s
largest free trade zone-located factories, the story served as a powerful
reminder of Mejía’s failure to prioritize workers’
rights in his economic plan after coming to office. The symbolic fact
that, among its other product lines, the factory makes sporting goods
for sale in the U.S., including apparel depicting Mejía’s
alma mater, the University of North Carolina, was not lost on those
closely following the story. Mejía defended the free trade
zone as creating jobs and prosperity; meanwhile, many Haitians saw
it as affront to their sovereignty, and exploitative and demeaning
of its workers.
Heady Beginnings
The story of the Mejía
presidency began with great flourish. He came to power in 2000 by
vanquishing the corrupt rule of Fernandez’s Partido de la Liberacion
Dominicana (PLD) as well as dealing a final blow to Joaquin Balaguer,
the country’s ancient presence – whose presidency for
six non-consecutive terms helped bankrupt the nation, while bringing
disgrace to his own Partido Reformista Social Cristiano – before
the cynical patriarch’s unlamented death in 2002. Attorney General
Janet Reno, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian, and Spain’s
Crown Prince Felipe attended Mejía’s inauguration.
Mejía’s 2000 victory
approached being a landslide. In the general election, Mejía
received approximately 50 percent of the vote. His two closest opponents
(Balaguer and Danilo Medina, the candidate of the incumbent PLD) could
only muster around 25 percent each. International observers –
accustomed to routinely dismissing in advance the results of past
Dominican elections – upheld the Mejía victory as unblemished.
By spectacularly wrenching power from the venal ruling party, Mejía
promised to end gridlock in lawmaking and to take strong action for
change.
Mejía promised to use
his international credibility along with the mandate provided by his
impressive electoral victory to focus on education, healthcare, food,
and housing. In the opening days of the Mejía presidency, great
strides were made. A Corruption Prevention Department (DEPRECO) was
established to take charge of the new administration’s “National
Plan for Fighting Against and Preventing Corruption,” as well
as, presumably, to undertake a full investigation into the rampant
corruption of its predecessor, Leonel Fernandez Reyna’s administration.
Unlike his predecessor, Mejía properly focused less on the
development of an ever-larger tourism industry, which he saw as favoring
the few over the many. He took the lead in the region in working with
the World Bank in trying to establish useful programs for the prevention
and control of HIV/AIDS. An agronomist by trade, Mejía told
the nation that agriculture and the environment would receive the
attention and the amount of aid that both sectors deserved. Mejía
also vowed to review the privatization measures of Fernandez, in order
to create an “economy with a human face.”
A Disappointing End?
Increasingly, though, the human
face on the economy has come from the Bush Administration and not
arising from within Mejia’s own nation. In contrast to his initial
promises to put some “distance” in the suffocating relations
that Fernandez had enjoyed with the U.S., Mejía’s recent
diplomacy seems to have represented a desire to find common ground
with Washington at almost any price. Other than the tri-lateral free
trade zone agreement with Haiti and the U.S., the most notable example
of his zeal to tighten his relationship with Washington is the pending
bilateral free trade agreement that Mejía will be discussing
tomorrow with President Bush. The Dominican leader’s policy,
which initially focused on using government resources to address social
issues – particularly housing – has given way to his recent
calls for austerity in government spending in the face of economic
contraction and inflation. His early commitment to making the distribution
of wealth more equitable, soon gave way to a renewed commitment to
neo-liberal reforms and cooperation with international lending organizations
(such as Deutsche Bank in Germany, and HBSC of the United Kingdom),
in carrying forth orthodox economic policies, which were good for
business, but not necessarily much of the electorate.
Earlier this year, thousands
of protestors marched on Santo Domingo to protest the Mejía
administration’s new economic recovery program. In December,
a poll indicated that while 84 percent of Dominicans believed there
is still corruption in government – a major issue Mejía
promised to address once in office – only a slight majority
felt the current administration is taking sufficient steps to eradicate
it. While seven members of the Fernandez administration have been
prosecuted on embezzlement charges, Fernandez himself remains uncharged
after Mejía apparently intervened and halted an ongoing investigation
of his possible participation in embezzlement plots. This gave the
appearance that Mejía’s policy is to allow Fernandez
to be an untouchable as far as having to face up to any crime he may
have committed, perhaps serving as a role model of damage control
in the case that Mejía himself faces any possible future embarrassment
of this kind.
Hunter Becomes the
Hunted
The unaddressed inequalities
existing in the Dominican Republic, along with the failure to prosecute
ex-president Fernandez and his major associates, represent at least
a failure of will on the part of the Mejía administration to
follow through and take aim at the 2000 campaign’s two biggest
targets. In the early years of his administration, he seemed to have
both of these on the run. Today, though, both the old nemesis and
the old problems remain, as visible as ever – almost certainly
to the detriment of Mejía’s credibility and the viability
of his re-election bid.
Ever growing troubles may lie
ahead for Mejía’s possible re-election campaign. On May
15, government officials arrested, among others, Ramón Báez
Figueroa, a media mogul who was also president of the now-defunct
Banco Intercontinental (known as “Baninter”). The case
is front-page news – Báez Figueroa is charged with helping
to defraud the Bank of $2.2 billion – and Mejía himself
may not be able to avoid its taint. Báez Figueroa claims that
the missing funds went not into his pockets, but to contributions
which included gifts to the country’s major political parties.
One such gift, which the government’s Central Bank acknowledges,
is an SUV purchased for Mejía by the generous magnate. Suspicions
surrounding the Mejía government have also been aroused because
officials attempted to hide evidence of the investigation from public
view until it was ready to announce the indictments.
In the context of the government’s
arrest and detention of Báez Figueroa, a number of his properties
have been seized, including the Dominican Republic’s oldest
newspaper, Listín Diario, and 70 radio stations and four television
stations controlled by Báez Figueroa’s interests. Mejía’s
opponents fear that the seizure of the media outlets had less to do
with money laundering charges against Báez Figueroa than with
Mejía’s desire to quiet some if his loudest critics.
In 2000, Listín endorsed Danilo Medina, the candidate of Fernandez’s
Dominican Liberation Party. Baninter then retained Fernandez’s
law firm at almost $6,000 a month.
Troubles lie ahead for Mejía
even given tenuous ties to the case. The enormous amount of money
involved in the scandal (equal to about 80 percent of the Dominican
government’s annual budget), and the clandestine nature of the
investigation up to this point both serve to paint a murky picture.
But Mejía, by association, hardly emerges as the bourgeois
Guapo de Gurabo (the tough guy from Gurabo) of his campaign.
Before Mejía can even
think of trying to run for another four years in office, however,
he will have to assemble a coalition of party members willing to give
him the nomination to seek re-election in the first place –
hardly likely to prove to be a cake-walk. Any number of well-meaning
Dominicans have come to believe that if the Partido Revolucionario
Dominicano’s Francisco Peña Gomez were alive, the venerated
soul of Mejía’s party would be deeply troubled by the
current president’s listless and uninspiring track record up
to this point.
This analysis was prepared
by Charles Willson, Research Associate, Council on Hemispheric Affairs.
Issued 19 May 2003
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