The right prevails over the parties: pragmatism dominates the political chess

Tania Molina/Part of the special Danger, turn right*

Stagnant in precepts of a century ago, the Dominican right stands on a minority of great influence in the majority parties and sectors of economic and religious power. His nationalist discourse, centered on the rejection of Haitian migration and the disregard of minority rights, give him validity in a society with strong conservative claws. In this story about the Dominican right, politicians, sociologists and historians take a look at the crisis that is affecting the party system and that has broken down the ideological borders that once distinguished it, dragging itself towards a pragmatism that makes them, more than parties, in political corporations.

On May 1, 2018, the citizens of the Dominican Republic received the news that the country was changing its historical ties with Taiwan to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. After 70 years of technical and economic support from Taiwan, under the presidency of Danilo Medina, of the right-liberal Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), the Caribbean country was leaning towards the communist regime of the Asian giant, a trade partner of which in 2017 imported US$2,378.9 million and to which it only exported US$85.7 million, according to official figures.

Six months later, on November 1, President Medina arrived in Beijing on the first official visit of a Dominican head of state to that nation. He returned with a folder full of cooperation agreements and investment promises in the financial, commercial, agricultural, and air navigation areas.

But before the promises materialized, the Dominican diplomatic landscape took a turn with President Luis Abinader Corona, who came to power two years and four months later, on August 16, 2020, on the ticket of the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM). ), a formation detached from the once powerful Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), with a right-wing and democratic tendency.

The electoral campaign that brought Abinader Corona to power had in its favor the diplomatic winds of the management of Republican Donald Trump. On July 11, 2019, when various groups in the country were pressuring the possibility that then-President Medina would reform the Constitution again to seek a third four-year term, the US government reported a call from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Dominican head of state.

The State Department reported that Pompeo spoke with Medina, "about the importance of all political actors in the Dominican Republic preserving democratic institutions and respecting the rule of law and the Constitution, particularly in the run-up to the 2020 elections." . After the electoral results, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Pompeo visited the country for the inauguration of Abinader Corona.

The president expressed, during an interview he gave to the Wilson Center of the United States on October 30: “If China wants to invest in non-strategic areas of the Dominican Government, its investment is welcome, but the decision of the Dominican Government is to have a strategic alliance with the United States". He added that the Asian nation is prohibited from investing in strategic areas, such as ports, airports and telecommunications.

At the origin of those events was the judgment TC/168-13, issued in 2013 by the Constitutional Court, presided over by the PRD, which strips Dominican nationality from all children of foreigners born on Dominican soil since 1929.

Prior to the 2010 reform, promoted by then President Leonel Fernández (PLD), the Dominican Constitution granted nationality to “all persons born in the territory of the Republic, with the exception of legitimate children of foreigners residing in the country. country in diplomatic representation or those who are in transit”.

As recognized then by the Central Electoral Board itself, rector of the civil registry in the country, whose president at the time, Roberto Rosario, is linked to ultra-nationalist groups, some 55 thousand people were affected by the ruling of the TC and by a resolution of the body dating from of 2007 that already restricted access to birth certificates for people of Haitian descent, born in the country.

For this group, Law 169-2014 was issued in 2014, which establishes a special regime for people born in the national territory irregularly registered in the Dominican civil registry and on naturalization. This, along with the National Plan for the Regularization of Foreigners that ordered the ruling of the TC to be carried out.

In February 2016, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued a report criticizing the human rights violations generated by the TC ruling. “The Commission considers that ruling TC/0168/2013 of the Constitutional Court led to an arbitrary deprivation of nationality for all the people over whom it extended its effects. In turn, the sentence had a discriminatory effect, since it mainly impacted Dominicans of Haitian descent; depriving them of their nationality retroactively; and generating statelessness with respect to those people who were not considered as their nationals by any other State”, says the report.

However, already in 2014, the TC had issued judgment 256-14, on an appeal of unconstitutionality filed by a group of nationalists, led by Pelegrín Castillo against the Instrument of Acceptance of the Jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, signed in February 1999 by the then President of the Republic, Leonel Fernández. Therefore, the IACHR report was ignored.

When analyzing the success of the nationalist sectors in terms of positioning the Haitian issue, Pérez Vargas highlights a strategy that he says is very effective: fear, which has an impact, above all, on humble people. “The nationalism that is proclaimed today is exclusionary, it is a nationalism that exploits the fears of the working class, and the suffering of the working class is feared as being responsible. So, that fear has to be essentially foreign and there is an exacerbation of everything that is national”.

The discourse of the nationalization of jobs is supported by the idea that Haitian migration deprives Dominicans of job opportunities, also that the health budget is allocated to the care of Haitians, especially women in labor.

Sometimes the speech can be more excessive. In 2018, on social networks, mainly WhatsApp, and various media outlets, the false complaint of an alleged poisoning of the drinking water distribution system in towns in the southern region of the country was spread. One of the messages indicated that Haitians were preparing a coup or attack against the country, a recurring theme in nationalist groups that also show manipulated videos of alleged soldiers trying to enter Dominican territory in groups, or large numbers of people killed at the hands of Haitian immigrants.

The information on the poisoning, and the fear generated in the population, forced the Ministry of Public Health to order an investigation of the aqueduct of the aforementioned areas, determining that it was false information and that the water "is suitable for human consumption."

Another recurring theme of the right, poised between promises and fear, is that of national stability, based on the preservation of peace and the conservation of traditional institutions. It happened when, in the 1970s, Joaquín Balaguer presented the country with the profile of a left that endangered the peace and development of the Dominican people, while his loyal soldiers and policemen marked a thread of blood that sought to dismantle an opposition progressive youth.

Religion and rights

The incidence of the ideology of the conservative right in the Dominican Republic has also pushed against the plans to establish the decriminalization of abortion in three exceptional cases, a demand by groups that defend women's rights.

The churches, main opponents of this exceptionality, under the allegation that life must be preserved from the moment of conception as established in the 2010 Constitution, have managed to articulate in their favor the vote of the majority in Congress.

The Dominican Penal Code, which dates back to 1844, penalizes the interruption of pregnancy in articles 107 to 110, which establish penalties of one to two years in prison for those who have or help perform an abortion. health professionals, such as doctors or nurses, those sentences are from four to ten years.

This was established in the modification that was made in 2014 to several articles of the Penal Code, which were previously vetoed by the then President of the Republic, Danilo Medina. His veto was justified on the issue of abortion, so that legislators specify the exceptions that should prevail in case of criminalizing the interruption of pregnancy, such as cases in which the life of the mother is in danger, when she has been a victim of rape or incest, or when the fetus has malformations incompatible with life.

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The Catholic Church, which by then had established in an office in the National Palace the priest Manuel Ruiz, liaison with the Executive Branch, launched it against Medina. Meanwhile, the calls for protests in favor of life in the surroundings of the Congress were more constant and since then began the practice of the churches of making lists of candidates for elective positions that they understand are those with "more values" and another of those who –at your discretion– you cannot vote for them.

With his religious influence Leonel Fernández surprised when, during the internal political campaign of the now opposition PLD, in the middle of a speech in August 2019, he proclaimed: “I consider myself to be a lover of God and I am because of the enigma of life and because the mystery of death and we know that beyond this life there is an eternal life that is achieved by acting well in this life”.

Fernández, who when he was president came to veto the Penal Code so that exceptions to the punishment of abortion were included, and expressed his support for Danilo Medina when it was his turn, relaxed his position in October 2019, when he declared: “ What I believe is that this should not prevent the approval of the Code. That the Code be approved as it is and the issue of the causes will be a matter of the Constitutional Court as it has been in Spain”.

More surprising was the case of congressman Pedro Catrain, linked to left-wing movements and civil society groups and who in 2014 was among a group of personalities who committed themselves as sponsors of the lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual (LGTB) group in Head to July's gay pride caravan.

His position took a turn, during the political campaign in which Catrain presented himself as a candidate for senator for the coastal Samaná province, in the north of the country, when an agreement was published that he adhered to with his signature. "I promise before God and all the evangelical and Catholic churches, that, as of August 16, 2020, when I am the next senator (...) not to raise my hands in favor of any project that attempts to modify our Constitution promulgated on January 26, 2010, against the word of God, values ​​and the family, to favor the group called LGTB, in relation to same-sex marriage and in favor of abortion”, it stated.

Within the government apparatus, religious conservatism finds other exponents of great incidence. Such is the case of the Vice President of the Republic, Raquel Peña, who came to the PRM ticket from the business and religious structure that supports the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM).

Founded by the Catholic Church in 1962, PUCMM has four religious and about 17 businessmen on its Board of Directors. Raquel Peña was vice-rector for Administration and Finance at the university, prior to her appointment in early 2020 as Abinader Corona's running mate. “Without first consulting specialists from all social spheres, it is impossible for me to agree with abortion on all three grounds,” he said while emphasizing his self-definition as pro-life, during an interview in which he was asked if he would support the three causes.

During the campaign process, the now President of the Republic, Luis Abinader, declared: “Our party has a position in relation to the grounds, that we understand that we must support those grounds. In general terms, we are a tolerant party, with everyone having their inclinations (regarding the LGBT community)”.

However, on August 16, while he was taking office in Congress as deputy for the PRM and president of the Chamber of Deputies, Congressman Alfredo Pacheco announced that they would submit the Penal Code for discussion without the issue of abortion. "We are going to submit the grounds as a new law and there was no consensus there, as is normal, but we intend to provide the country with this legislation in the next hundred days," he said.

Firm hand

The mano dura or law and order policy to deal with crime is also linked to right-wing tendencies in the Dominican Republic, heir to a practice of the Trujillo dictatorship. Phrases such as "lock him up and then ask" or "give him pa' bajo", with which the military and police forces know the practice of detaining people without complying with the minimum human rights provisions, or, what is worse, extrajudicial executions place the Dominican Republic on the list of countries where human rights are disrespected.

“Human rights issues included reports of arbitrary or unlawful killings by government security forces; acts of torture committed by police officers and other government agents; arbitrary arrests; harsh and cruel prison conditions that threaten life itself (...)”, summarized the IACHR in its 2018 report on human rights in the Dominican Republic.

Despite the fact that it is a questioned practice, conservative sectors have promoted it in their speeches. In 2008, the then Dominican Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez suggested that the National Police act "without pious contemplation" at a time when that institution was being questioned for the death of several civilians at the hands of police agents. He also indicated that the rights of the people who are victims of criminals, "are not below the rights of the perpetrators."

In its 2018 report, the IACHR indicates that the Dominican government took certain steps to punish officials who committed reported human rights abuses, but that there were widespread reports of “official impunity and corruption, especially in those cases where high-ranking officials were involved.”

tax policy

And the rich are also protected from paying their taxes. An article published in September 2020 by the newspaper Diario Libre, under the signature of the journalist Edwin Ruiz, entitled "Consumers: the goose that lays the golden eggs of the Dominican treasury", states that in the Dominican Republic the poor pay more taxes than the rich.

For his statement, he cites a report from the General Directorate of Internal Taxes (DGII) on the Dominican Tax System, updated to 2018. It states that direct tax collections on wealth and property in Latin America represent 39.3%, while in the most developed countries (OECD countries) it is 48.8%. “On the other hand, in the Dominican Republic in direct taxes (on wealth and assets) that percentage is only 33.6%. So, the Dominican Republic is a champion in charging less taxes to the rich.”

Regarding the collection of indirect taxes, which are levied on consumption, he cites that in Latin America the percentage of collection is 60.7%, and in the OECD countries it is 51.2%, on the other hand, in the Dominican Republic the proportion is 66.4%. .“Then, the Dominican Republic is the champion in taxing more consumers and consequently households,” says Ruiz.

In January 2012, Law 1-12 was approved, establishing the National Development Strategy. Said legislation in its article 36, states the need for the political, economic and social forces to arrive at a fiscal pact. This pact must be aimed at reducing tax evasion, ii) increasing the quality, efficiency and transparency of public spending, iii) increasing the efficiency, transparency and equity of the tax structure (...)”.

To date, no consensus has been reached for the signature, although the new government has declared it a priority issue.

An influential right

"The post-Trujillo Dominican right has had a lot of influence on national politics, but not as political actors formally organized in parties, but above all as interest groups with great influence on decision-making in the State," says sociologist Wilfredo Lozano . They have done so through formal corporate organizations, such as Conep and the Catholic Church in its high hierarchy, or informal pressure groups, such as the so-called "Santiago Group (entrepreneurs with great economic power)".

Except for the case of the National Civic Union in the past, in general the right has never had its own organized political expression with mass impact. "The case of Balaguer as a right-wing leader is different, because he was a Bonapartist leader who, as a conservative, always agreed with the right, but he maintained his reformist vision of the social order and the role of the State," says Lozano.

For Lozano, an official in the government of Abinader Corona, the Dominican right had and maintains a determining importance in the political life of the country. “So much so that it can be said that today the national political spectrum as a whole is highly influenced by the right.

He argues that the parties, having to coexist with the push of the masses and with the growing demands for social participation, "have had to move in a double movement: assume a populist look, which has introduced a kind of social conditioning in the forces on the right, and on the other, permanently negotiating with conservative pressure groups, which has forced them to make the State an instrument that, above all, produces stabilizing policies that tend, in most cases, to slow down social reforms.”

* Journalistic special on the rights in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Mexico, with the participation of Macarena Segovia, Werner Pertot, Fábio Zanini, Alejandra de Vengoechea, Tania Molina, Paty Godoy. Editor: Omar Rincon