Leonel Fernández

Leonel Fernández (2009)

Leonel Antonio Fernández Reyna (born December 26, 1953 in Santo Domingo ) is a Dominican lawyer and politician ( Partido de la Liberación Dominicana (PLD)) and was President of the Dominican Republic from 1996 to 2000 and 2004 to 2012 . He was considered a close collaborator of Juan Bosch . Fernández was also President of the EU LAC Foundation from 2016 to 2020 .

Life

Fernández was born to José Antonio Fernández Collado and Yolanda Reyna Romero. As a child he emigrated with his parents to New York , where he attended elementary school and later also a high school.

After his return to the Dominican Republic, he signed the list of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD). During this time he would also get to know his future leader and mentor Juan Bosch, with whom he and other politicians founded the liberal Partido de la Liberación Dominicana (PLD) in 1973. In 1978 he completed his law studies as the best of his year. As a university lecturer (professor at the UASD and at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales) he worked in the areas of communication sociology , press law and international relations .

He later wrote several books ( Los Estados Unidos en el Caribe: De la Guerra Fría al Plan Reagan ; Raíces de un Poder Usurpado ) and worked for several domestic and foreign newspapers in the fields of communication, culture, history and law.

President of the Dominican Republic

In 1985 and 1990 he was elected a member of the Central Committee and Political Committee of the PLD. His personal commitment led to his being nominated as a candidate for the vice-presidency in 1994. The militant core of the PLD, however, won a battle vote in 1996, which Fernández appointed as the official presidential candidate of the PLD. Fernández won the 1996 election in the second ballot against José Francisco Peña Gómez thanks to the support of the Partido Revolucionario Social Cristiano (PRSC) of Joaquín Balaguer and thus became one of the youngest heads of state in Latin America . With his dynamic and aggressive foreign policy, he saved his country from the isolation that had persisted since the Trujillo dictatorship . In 1999 and 2000 he was the first head of state in the Dominican Republic to visit countries such as France, Italy and Japan after the Trujillo dictatorship.

In the presidential election of 2000 he could not run as a candidate because of the constitutional prohibition on immediate re-election; The candidate of the social democratic Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD), Hipólito Mejía was elected . Leonel, as the Dominican people call him for short, concentrated in the following years on the development of the Dominican Republic and Latin America. As president, he promoted the foundations of democracy, the quality of national debate and the training of workers. In 2002 he was elected, almost unanimously, president of the PLD.

Since the ruling PRD in 2003, in view of the initially high approval rates Mejías had in the hope of his re-election, had the ban on immediate re-election through, Fernández was able to run again after the end of his term of office, was re-elected against Hipólito Mejía in the 2008 presidential elections and was thus able to win a third Take office.

In terms of foreign policy, under Fernández, relations with other countries than the traditional trading partners USA and Spain were expanded. Under him, the Dominican Republic developed good relations with both the US government and left-wing governments such as Venezuela, and signed the Petrocaribe Agreement. In terms of economic policy, in his first term of office he mainly focused on larger technological projects such as the construction of a subway for 710 million US dollars. On the one hand, it was controversially discussed that he was relying on publicity-oriented projects, while in view of the poverty in the country other investments would be more advantageous for the people, on the other hand this was praised as technical progress. Greater growth rates were achieved during his tenure, but there were, among other things, severe problems in the area of ​​unemployment (15% rate).

Fernández wanted to run again for the presidential election on May 17, 2020, but fell out with the incumbent president and his party friend Danilo Medina , who according to the current constitution is no longer allowed to run after two terms in office. In the internal party primaries of the PLD in October 2019, Fernández was narrowly defeated by the previous Minister for Public Works and Communications, Gonzalo Castillo, who was supported by Medina. Dominican Republic: Leonel Fernandez splits the PLD and leaves the party. domreptotal.com, October 21, 2019, accessed April 6, 2020 .  Fernández then left his party in a dispute and merged with the small party "Partido de los Trabajadores Dominicanos" (Dominican Workers' Party) to form the new La Fuerza del Pueblo party, whose top candidate he is for the presidential elections.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Acknowledgments on occasion of the conclusion of the mandate of Dr. Leonel Fernández Reyna as President of the EU-LAC International Foundation. eulacfoundation.org, February 7, 2020, accessed February 26, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Fernández wins election in Dominican Republic. In: Hamburger Morgenpost . May 17, 2008.
3. ^ Jorge Rueda: Venezuela Warms to Dominican Republic. In: Washington Post . October 30, 2006
4. ^ Marc Lacey: Dominican President Wins a Third Term. In: New York Times . May 17, 2008.
5. ↑ Leonel Fernández descarta retorno al PLD. listindiario.com, April 3, 2020, accessed April 6, 2020 (Spanish). 

Web links

Commons : Leonel Fernández  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biography ( english , french )

predecessor	Office	successor
Joaquín Balaguer	President of the Dominican Republic 1996–2000	Hipólito Mejía
Hipólito Mejía	President of the Dominican Republic 2004–2012	Danilo Medina