Ruling Party’s Two Decades of Power at Risk in Dominican Vote

(Bloomberg) -- The ruling party's two-decade grip on the Dominican Republic is at risk on Sunday in elections held amid the worst Covid-19 outbreak in the Caribbean.

Dominicans are voting for a president and congress after a campaign that saw repeated lockdown violations, the front-runner infected with the virus, and a husband and wife on rival presidential tickets.

Incumbents' parties have been ousted across the region over the last year, from Argentina to Uruguay to Suriname. Most polls show opposition candidate and economist Luis Abinader, 52, leading the race after graft scandals chipped away support for the ruling party.

The winner will take control of the Caribbean's largest economy as it faces its deepest slump in three decades due to the collapse of tourism. That's a sharp reversal for an economy that was the top performer in the Americas last year.

A Gallup poll conducted from June 12-16 gave Abinader and his Modern Revolutionary Party 54% support versus former public works minister Gonzalo Castillo, with the ruling Dominican Liberation Party, or PLD, on 36%. If Abinader wins more than half the ballots, he can avoid a July 26 run-off.

Investors Agnostic

Leonel Fernandez, a former three-time president who broke with the PLD, was in third place with 9% of the vote. Fernandez's wife, Margarita Cedeno, is the country's current vice president and also Castillo's running-mate.

There are no major ideological differences between the main candidates, and none is likely to change the pro-business model in the country of 11 million people, Eurasia Group analyst Risa Grais-Targow said.

“Investors are pretty agnostic, since the ideological spectrum is so narrow in the the Dominican Republic,” Grais-Targow said, in reply to written questions.

Abinader is the executive president of Grupo ABICOR, a tourism developer, and vice president of the Cementos Santo Domingo cement company.

Polls will be open from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. local time and initial results are expected late Sunday.

The election to pick the president, 32 senators and 190 deputies was originally scheduled for May 17 but was suspended due to the pandemic. In early June, Abinader, his wife and two of his three daughters tested positive for the coronavirus, though he now says he's fully recovered.

He's pledged to keep the exchange rate stable and seek fresh financing on international markets and to maintain the welfare programs the government rolled out in response to the pandemic.

The PLD has been in power for 20 of the last 24 years, and its control of congress, the judiciary and the presidency has created an atmosphere where corruption can flourish, said Ricardo Ripoll, head of Somos Pueblo, a Dominican pro-transparency group.

President Danilo Medina signaled that the PLD won't go down without a fight. Speaking to party officials ahead of the vote, Medina told them not to send “little gentlemen” to oversee polling Sunday but only people “with guts” who are “brave enough to defend the vote.”

As of Thursday, the country had more than 33,000 confirmed cases of the virus, more than anywhere else in the Caribbean.

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