Although it is clear that Luis Abinader will be the presidential candidate of the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM) and Leonel Fernández that of the People’s Force (FP), it is the candidacy that the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) will lead that will chart the course of the presidential elections of 2024.
Today there are 44 days left for the sympathy consultation that will indicate the purple candidacy. From then on, the main elements to understand the perspective of the elections will be available to analysts.
The political confrontation for the power dispute in 2024 will have, at least, two novel aspects that if the PLD members are aware of them and want to make a thorough rectification of their old practices, they can be well used to convert them into votes.
I mean that the candidacy that the PLD will choose is going for its first presidential attempt once morest a new re-election bid by Leonel and Abinader; and at the moment of political changes that Latin America is experiencing.
The PLD Factor
Any of the six candidates who win the PLD presidential candidacy will enter the contest for power for the first time, which may become a novelty compared to Abinader, who is on his fourth attempt, and Fernández, who is running for the sixth time.
Naturally, among the PLD presidential candidates Luis de León, Maritza Hernández, Francisco Domínguez, Margarita Cedeño, Abel Martínez and Karen Ricardo, there are notable differences in leadership and popular acceptance.
Margarita or Abel
It is obvious that the candidacy will be defined between Margarita and Abel, because the others – with the permission of their expectations – have very little chance of placing themselves above the former vice president and the current mayor of Santiago.
When choosing between Margarita and Abel, the PLD supporters will define the “ideological” course that the PLD will take in the debate on major national issues and its insertion in the change of era that is sweeping Latin America.
If the chosen one is Margarita, as the result indicates, the PLD candidacy will have a margin of acceptance in broad social sectors seeking change, women’s rights, social inclusion, among others; while if the chosen one is Abel, the PLD will send a message that he will enter the competition to prove who is more conservative among Abinader, Leonel and Abel to occupy the Presidency of the Republic.
In a competition to show which candidate is more conservative, no one is going to beat Abinader, if a conservative is what the electorate prefers, because in addition to having shown from the government that he is, he has the greatest control of resources in both hands. audiences of all kinds to defeat their opponents.
Such a fight is the equivalent of my challenging Manuel Jiménez to see who can sing “Derroche” better in front of ten thousand people or him challenging me to show which of the two can climb Mount Tina first, leaving on foot from the Liberty Park in Ocoa.
I am not saying that Margarita is the Dominican prototype of the progressive thought that is making its way unstoppably in Latin America, but she is a more liberal person than Abel and much more than Abinader and Leonel.
If the PLD chooses Margarita, it sends the signal that it is going following the band of liberal voters that tries to continue promoting changes in Latin America.
If instead he selects Abel, he wants a conservative course for the country, seeking to fill the void left in the region by the governments of Sebastián Piñera in Chile, Iván Duque in Colombia and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.
a progressive wave
It is an evident fact that in recent years there has been a debacle of the conservative (politically) and neoliberal (economically) governments in Latin America and that the great masses clearly vote for the candidacies that claim to be progressive.
The failure of the Summit of the Americas last June in Los Angeles, organized this time by the United States as the host country, showed that “elite democracy” without progressive voices is losing ground in the region.
And following the Summit came the resounding triumph of Gustavo Petro in Colombia, a former combatant of the April 19 Movement (M-19), together with the brunette Francia Márquez, as vice president.
The victory of Petro and Márquez is loaded with symbolism in a country where the oligarchy and the weight of the political influence of the United States were the strongest in South America.
After the feat of Colombians in throwing conservatism out of power, which led to an archetype of that political current as a candidate, tycoon Rodolfo Hernández, “the great malls” are open in the region and those who know this reality and are willing to pay the price of changing politically to make great transformations in the Dominican Republic, they have a great opportunity.
the left space
The absence of a left-wing candidacy due to leadership weaknesses and accumulated organizational deficits since 1985, focuses the political confrontation on the PRM, PLD and FP parties.
I know that there are attempts to unite the spectrum of the remnants of the left in the country, but I do not believe expectations because there is a lack of strong and innovative leadership, capable of incarnating and electorally representing that political strip of the country.
That is the great lack and trying to create it artificially only leads to new frustrations.
Who can explain that following the massive mobilizations since January 2017, called by the Green March, an independent political referent did not emerge to channel the progressive vote in the 2020 elections?
What explains that the wear and tear caused by the Green March to the government of Danilo Medina and the PLD was channeled by Luis Abinader and the PRM, who have a conservative seal and a selective persecuting approach to their political opponents?
What explains that the most conspicuous leaders of ‘civil society’ enlisted in the Abinader-PRM government and shut their mouths in the face of gigantic scandals in the current government that were their concern in the past?
The result of the accumulation of the Green March was the political instrumentalization by the PRM, which once in government distributed crumbs to progressivism and handed over the ministries to the business community and the largest contracts for them to take advantage of the heritage.
Continuing to play the role of “brave little horse who puts the burden on him and doesn’t feel it” is a new possibility for the leftists, unless they achieve a programmatic agreement and a political commitment that in the current scenario only Margarita can do, and without a doubt, she needs him to vindicate the essence of the PLD and face two conservative re-election candidates: Abinader and Leonel.
It remains to be seen if Margarita is seeing where the votes are by the millions who want a flag to represent them or if she thinks it is enough to support her candidacy in the arms of the oligarchy like her opponents.
The first path provides him with oxygen, the second is occupied by Leonel and Abinader, who have already enjoyed – in different times than today – their business dealings with the oligarchy.
I have not exhausted the subject.
