Dominicans prepare to elect their new president this Sunday through thick and thin
Dominicans are preparing to elect a new president tomorrow, armed with masks, disinfectants and a sanitary protocol that will keep them two meters away, to avoid getting the coronavirus in the polling stations.
The voting process was postponed on May 17 by the Central Electoral Board (JCE), due to the state of national emergency and curfew that the country was in due to the health crisis caused by Covid-19.
However, the authorities of the Ministry of Public Health warn that the situation has worsened since then, bringing the number of deaths to 775, with 35,138 positive cases and a record 951 people infected in the last 24 hours.
It is a unique experience in the electoral history of the Dominican Republic, only compared to the stressful moments that governed the elections of June 1, 1966, held after the civil-military war, which caused the invasion of the United States.
Presidential candidates
Other particularities that the almost 7.6 million voters called for this Sunday will find are three electoral ballots with the colors and emblems of 25 political parties with legal status.
The first ballot corresponds to the presidential level, where you can mark the preferred box of one of the six acting presidential candidates: Luis Abinader, Gonzalo Castillo, Leonel Fernández, Guillermo Moreno, Ismael Reyes and Juan Cohén.
Former President Fernández, a candidate of Fuerza del Pueblo, is the longest-running politician. He was vice-presidential candidate of Professor Juan Bosch for the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), in 1994 and president in the periods 1996-2000, 2004-2008 and 2008-2012. He has not been defeated as a presidential candidate.
It is followed by Moreno, who carries Agustín González as a ballot partner, and has to his credit the failed presidential candidacies of 2008, Movimiento Independencia Unidad y Cambio (Miuca), and Alianza País, in 2012 and 2016. In the case of Castillo, candidate for the ruling PLD enters the ring for the first time.
While Abinader was vice-presidential candidate of Hipólito Mejía by the PRD, in 2012, and presidential candidate of the PRM, in 2016.
Three women to the vice presidency
This time we are also in the presence of three women as vice-presidential candidates. Margarita Cedeño aspires for the third time, now she joins Castillo. In 2012 she won as President Danilo Medina’s ballot partner, as in 2016.
It is striking that Fernández chose the leader of her ally Social Christian Reformist Party (PRSC), Sergia Elena de Séliman, as her ballot partner, while her wife Margarita Cedeño is in a radically opposite position in the PLD as Castillo’s ballot partner.
Abinader has twice selected a woman as a ballot partner. In 2016 she chose Carolina Mejía, daughter of Hipólito Mejía and current mayor of the National District, while now she goes with Raquel Peña, businesswoman and social activist from Santiago and the Cibao region.
From Listín Diario.
