Leonel Fernandez, the current president of
the Dominican Republic, is favoured for re-election on Friday, when the Caribbean country holds a general election.
Fernandez, 54, a liberal who already held the Dominican Presidency from
1996-2000 and 2004-2008, is expected to win the upcoming election with a
resounding 55 per cent in the first round, enough to avoid a runoff, according
to the latest opinion poll made public in Dominican media.
The incumbent is the candidate of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), and has
the backing of a 12-party coalition.
His challengers are Miguel Vargas, of the social democratic Dominican
Revolutionary Party, and Amable Aristy, a right-wing populist who handed out
chickens, pigs and even cash during his campaign.
According to the opinion pollster Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, Vargas could claim
37 per cent and Aristy 6 per cent of the vote.
In the poll, four other candidates failed to register significant percentages.
"Leonel Fernandez can start planning for the coming four years," said
Mark Feierstein, vice president of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, in comments
published by the daily Diario Libre. "If nothing catastrophic happens to
him and his campaign, he should win the election comfortably."
Most of the candidates agree on the major issues - the need for strategies to
counter the world crises around food and fuel prices, and to combat poverty,
corruption, unemployment and insecurity in the Caribbean nation.
Fernandez has been accused several times of financing his campaign with state
funds, and electoral authorities ordered him to stop paying salaries to
supporters with state money.
Vargas was also linked to a case of alleged corruption while he was secretary
of state for public works.
Over 200 international observers are to oversee the election, in which some 5.8
million Dominican citizen are entitled to vote for the next four-year
presidential term.
The current campaign has been described as one of the least violent in the
country's history, despite numerous demonstrations in recent weeks to demand
higher salaries, lower prices for food, fuel and medicine, and generally that
the current government fulfil its promises.
Electoral authorities imported from Japan 742 scanners to help count ballots
from about 13,000 voting centres across the country's 32 provinces. The new
mechanism has been questioned by some sectors of the opposition, who argue that
the scanners were brought in too late for their functions to be fully known.
However, the Organization of American States (OAS) and several NGOs that are
overseeing the election say the new system will provide faster results.
To keep order during election day, 42,000 police officers and eight police
helicopters will be patrolling.
The Dominican Republic has a bicameral Congress in which both houses are
currently controlled by Fernandez's party. The country is set to hold
legislative elections in 2010.
The Dominican Republic - which shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with the poorer and more politically-volatile Haiti - had a GDP of 35.49 billion
dollars in 2007, with a growth rate of 7.2 per cent. Some 42 per cent of its
9.1 million people live in poverty.
A net importer of foodstuffs, the Dominican Republic is greatly suffering price
increases that have affected much of the world and provoked political unrest in
Haiti, where the prime minister lost his job over food riots, and elsewhere.
The United States is the country's main commercial partner, and claims over
72.7 per cent of the Dominican Republic's exports, dpa
reported.
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