Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

4 million persons eligible. Despite delays, loud complaints
from among the losing parties, some incidents, and various
apparent irregularities in voting, the elections held on May 21
were termed "credible" by international and domestic observers
and by the Organization of American States (OAS) Election
Observation Mission.
Although the Lavalas Family, the party of Aristide, apparently
gained a substantial election victory at the ballot box, the
OAS subsequently discovered a serious error in the method of
determining the winners of Senate races as announced by the
Provisional Electoral Council. The OAS asked the Council to
recalculate the percentage of votes won by all candidates, an
action that could force several declared Senate winners to take
part in runoff voting. The runoff election was rescheduled for
July 9. The Council, with strong support from the presidential
palace, refused to accept the OAS recommendations, however,
creating an emerging international confrontation. This conflict
is only the latest chapter in Haiti's troubled quest for postdictatorial
democracy.
Conditions are somewhat better in the Dominican Republic,
although there, too, political instability has existed. Leonel
Fernandez won the 1996 runoff elections, but he has been
unsuccessful in implementing many of his programs because of
his party's small representation in Congress. In the 1998 elections,
following the death ofJose Peha Gomez, his opposition
party, the Democratic Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario
Dominicano—PRD), made sweeping gains. As a result,
Congress in 1998 passed a new law abolishing the security of
tenure of judges that Fernandez had achieved and making
judges subject to reappointment every four years. A poll taken
in April 2000 showed that no candidate for the May 2000 presidential
elections had the just over 50 percent needed for election
(Fernandez was ineligible to run again) . As it developed,
with 99 percent of the ballots counted, the Electoral Council
announced the evening of May 17 that the opposition PRD
candidate, Hipolito Mejia, had received 49.87 percent of the
vote. His nearest opponent, Danilo Medina of the governing
Dominican Liberation Party, had 24.94 percent of the vote, and
seven-time former president Joaquin Balaguer had 24.6 percent.
At a press conference on May 18, Medina stated that a
June 30 runoff election would cost too much in time, money,
and tension and that a continued campaign would hurt the
economy. Therefore he "acknowledged the victory of the
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