Keeping the Lid On

Along Calle el Conde, a once fashionable shopping street in Santo Domingo, business was at a near-standstill last week. In the Ciudad Nueva district of the capital, once known as "the Kremlin" because of all the middle-class boys who grew up to be radicals there, posters coated the trees. Evenings, cinemas throughout the city were all but empty and streets were deserted before midnight--the traditional time for political murders. Once again the Dominican Republic was facing the test of presidential elections, and as usual, violence played a leading role. In the three weeks before the balloting, 29 people died and 47 were wounded in political killings, victims of the extreme right and the extreme left. One of the dead: an eight-year-old child, who was killed when guards in a motorcade of President Joaquin Balaguer's Reformista Party fired at rock throwers as it rumbled into a Santo Domingo slum.

Stodgy Bachelor. Balaguer, who revised the constitution so that he could seek re-election to a second four-year term, spent the last weeks of the campaign barnstorming the countryside, where he was particularly strong. Though unemployment hovers around 30%, this year's harvest is a good one, assuring Balaguer of continuing strength among the wealthy landowners as well as the peasants, who historically have gone along with "the boss"--the man in power.

Some critics accused Balaguer of trying to establish a dictatorship, as had his mentor, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, who ruled for 31 years until his assassination in 1961. "He runs the country like a Florentine court," said a banker, implying that he is all too remote from the island's people and their aspirations. "The longer we postpone taking the lid off, the greater will be the explosion here." Others accused him of lacking imagination and concentrating on showcase projects instead of attacking basic problems such as poverty, educational shortcomings and land reform. In reply, Balaguer pointed to his record since his election in 1966, after the U.S. intervention. "Everything I promised has been accomplished," he said, "with the exception of museums in Santo Domingo and Santiago de los Caballeros." To win voters' loyalty, Balaguer hands out gifts at every campaign stop: new shoes, bolts of cloth, caps and 5-and 1-peso notes. It was an old-fashioned campaign typical of the man--a stodgy bachelor who neither smokes nor drinks.

The Abstainers. As the election date neared, Balaguer looked more and more like a winner. His four rivals were unable to unite; the two strongest--right-wing ex-General Elias Wessin y Wessin and conservative Vice President Francisco Augusto Lora--lagged far behind. The man who would have proved Balaguer's strongest opponent, ex-President Juan Bosch, was abstaining from participation in the election, and so was his Dominican Revolutionary Party, the country's largest political party. Explained Bosch, a Utopian with a strong emotional following among the poor who was overthrown by the military in 1963 after only seven months in office: "Elections don't solve anything, because the military does not respect the results." Instead, the former President urges what he vaguely describes as "a dictatorship with popular support," which is not "Communistic." Implicit in Bosch's statements is the hope of an eventual coup that will return him to power, but even Bosch himself realizes that this is far off.

Comfortable Posts. In the voting at week's end, Balaguer's well-organized political machine dominated the Dominican scene. The President was backed not only by the influential military but also by officeholders--many of them ex-Trujillo followers--eager to hang on to their comfortable posts. As the counting of the votes began and the President spurted to an early lead over his rivals, it seemed that Joaquin Balaguer might yet find time to build those museums.

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