Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies
in March 1988, and another in June 1989, took place between
1987-89; in 1990 Balaguer faced two general strikes in the summer
and two others in the fall. Through a patchwork quilt of
policies, the administration was able to limp through the May
1990 elections without a formal stabilization plan.
In spite of the country's problems, Balaguer achieved a narrow
plurality 7 victory in 1990. In elections marred by irregularities
and charges of fraud, the eighty-three-year-old incumbent
edged out his eighty-year-old opponent, Bosch, by a mere
24,470 votes. Peha Gomez, the PRD candidate, emerged as a
surprisingly strong third candidate. By 1990 the PRD was irreparably
split along lines that had formed during the bitter struggle
for the 1986 presidential nomination. Peha Gomez had
stepped aside for Jacobo Majluta in 1986 but had vowed not to
do so again. The failure of numerous efforts since 1986 to settle
internal disputes, as well as extensive legal and political
wrangling, eventually left Peha Gomez in control of the PRD
apparatus. Majluta ran at the head of a new party and came in a
distant fourth.
Once Balaguer was reelected, he focused on resolving growing
tensions between his government and business and the
international financial community. In August 1990, Balaguer
commenced a dialogue with business leaders and signed a Solidarity
Pact. In this pact, Balaguer agreed to curtail (but not
abandon) his state-led developmentalism in favor of more austerity
and market liberalization. He reduced public spending,
renegotiated foreign debt, and liberalized the exchange rate,
but he did not privatize state enterprises. An agreement with
the IMF was reached in 1991, and ultimately what had been historically
high rates of inflation in the country (59 percent in
1990 and 54 percent in 1991) receded. Levels of social protest
also decreased, as the country looked toward the 1994 elections.
In the 1994 campaign, the main election contenders were
Balaguer of the PRSC and Peha Gomez of the PRD, with Bosch
of the PLD running a distant third. In spite of suspicion and
controversies, hopes ran high that with international help to
the Electoral Board, a consensus document signed by the leading
parties in place, and international monitoring, the 1994
elections would be fair, ending a long sequence of disputed
elections in the Dominican Republic. Much to the surprise of
many Dominicans and international observers, irregularities in
voter registry lists were detected early on election day, which
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