Partido Revolucionario Dominicano
The Partido Revolucionario Dominicano ( PRD ) is a social democratic party in the Dominican Republic and one of the country's most important political groups. The party was founded in 1939 by Juan Bosch and fellow campaigners in exile and appointed the country's elected president four times after the Trujillo dictatorship (Juan Bosch 1963, Antonio Guzmán 1978–1982, Salvador Jorge Blanco 1982–1986 and Hipólito Mejía 2000–2004). It was thus the most elected party until 2000 and the first organization in the country with broad mass support. Although its official position is defined in the usual classification as center-left and social democratic and protagonists of the party are represented in the Socialist International (even as its vice-president in 2010), it also advocates certain postulates that deviate from social democracy. The PRD is the leader of an alliance known as "Bloque de Esperanza".
The PRD has suffered numerous splits in its history due to internal struggles between its leaders and has therefore lost importance in recent years. Among the parties that emerged as a result of such splits, the most important were or are the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano Auténtico (PRDA) by Nicolás Silfa in 1962, the Partido de la Liberación Dominicana (PLD) by Juan Bosch in 1973, and the Partido Revolucionario Independiente (PRI) by Jacobo Majluta 1987, the Partido Revolucionario Social Demócrata (PRSD) by Hatuey De Camps 2005 and the Partido Revolucionario Moderno (PRM) by Hipólito Mejía 2014.
Because of its eventful history, the PRD is often referred to by its opponents as the “partido caótico”. The color of the PRD in the election campaigns is white .
founding
Foundation in Cuba, first foreign sections
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On January 21, 1939, the exile Dominicans Juan Isidro Jiménes Grullón, Virgilio and Rafael Mainardi Reyna, Enrique Cotubanamá Henríquez, Alexis Liz, José Manuel Calderón, Romano Pérez Cabral, Pipí Hernández, Lucas Pichardo, Pompeyo Alfau and Plinta Woss, led by Juan Manuel Calderón , in Villa de El Cano near Havana , Cuba , founded a party with the aim of overthrowing the Trujillo dictatorship and fighting for a democratic future in the Dominican Republic. The patriotically minded group formulated a manifesto against the Trujillo dictatorship and issued a party program and initial statutes.
The first section was founded in New York in 1940 in the residence and under the direction of Juan "Juanito" M. Díaz. For this, Jiménes Grullón and Cotubanamá Henríquez traveled from Cuba to New York. It was decided to name the party Unión Revolucionaria Dominicana .
Until 1940 Jiménes Grullón was general secretary of the party, the other party leaders were Manuel Alexis Liz, Enrique Cotubanamá Henríquez, Lucas Pichardo, Virgilio and Victor Mainardi Reyna and Romano Pérez Cabral. Dominicans in exile should set up sections in Mexico , Puerto Rico , Venezuela , Curaçao and Aruba as soon as possible in addition to New York .
In 1940 the party took over the national progressism of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the “aprismo” of the Mexican-born Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre , 1924 founder of the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) in Peru. She initially remained active in exile, where she fought against the regime of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo and organized conspiracies. They and other groups in exile in various countries supported several armed expeditions to the Dominican Republic, but most of them failed, be it because of the strict control that the dictator exercised over the country, because of the disagreements among the political groups in exile or because of the spies who Trujillo himself had stopped outside the country.
Arrival in the Dominican Republic
After Trujillo's assassination on May 30, 1961, the party's leadership decided to return to the country and abandon armed struggle as a means of overthrowing the regime. Instead, power should now be conquered through political action and the national problems solved in this way.
On July 5, 1961, Ángel Miolán, Nicolás Silfa and Ramón A. Castillo came to the Dominican Republic on behalf of the party and at the invitation of the trujillist President Joaquín Balaguer , who was under pressure from democratic forces, with the political mission of formally establishing the PRD to organize throughout the republic. On July 7th, hundreds of people gathered in Santo Domingo in Parque Colón opposite the newly inaugurated party headquarters at 13 Calle Conde for the first meeting of an opposition party after Trujillo's death. It began with speeches by the Comisión Política (Political Committee) under the leadership of Miolán, Silfa and Castillo.
A short time later, in 1962, before Bosch won the presidency in 1963, Nicolás Silfa founded the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano Auténtico (PRDA) and entered into an alliance with Joaquín Balaguer, the confidant and spiritual heir of Trujillo. He was therefore considered a traitor in the ranks of the PRD. Silfa was later named as partly responsible for Balaguer staying in power until 1978.
organization
President and party leader is Miguel Vargas Maldonado (since 2008), Vice-President Aníbal Díaz Belliard, Secretary General Tony Peña Guaba and Speaker of Parliament Ruddy González (all since 2014). The party is headed by the Comisión Política, which in addition to the President, the Vice-President and the Secretary General has more than 70 members. The Comité Ejecutivo Nacional (National Executive Committee) is the party's highest organ. It consists of more than 600 members and elects the members of the Comisión Política from among its members, unless they are ex officio members. The youth organization of the PRD is the Juventud Revolucionaria Dominicana.
Presidential election
1962-1974
In 1962, Juan Bosch also returned to the Dominican Republic and ran as leader of the PRD in the first free presidential election in late 1962. He won the election and took office on February 27, 1963 with his Vice President Segundo González. However, his government was overthrown after only seven months by a CIA- sponsored coup.
After that there were no really free elections until 1978. After the Dominican Civil War in 1965 and the US occupation, the US-appointed Héctor García Godoy (1965-1966) ruled. Bosch ran again in 1966, but was defeated by the US-sponsored Joaquín Balaguer, who founded the Partido Reformista (PR) in 1963 and ruled from 1966 to 1978 (known as the "12 Years of Balaguers").
In 1970 the PRD did not take part in the presidential election in protest against the political climate, which does not allow democratic and open elections. The party's general secretary, José Francisco Peña Gómez , opposed this decision by Bosch , who thought that the best way for the party to become stronger was through democratic means, and not by leaving it hanging in the air. The differences between Peña Gómez and Bosch about the future direction of the party, which then became more intense, led Bosch to leave the PRD in 1973. Bosch founded the Partido de la Liberación Dominicana , which dominates today, while Peña Gómez became the new undisputed leader of the PRD and its president from 1986.
After Bosch left the PRD, Peña Gómez formed the Acuerdo de Santiago on April 11, 1974 , an alliance that the Partido Revolucionario Social Cristiano (PRSC, not to be confused with the Partido Reformista Social Cristiano, which Balaguer only founded in 1986) Partido Quisqueyano Demócrata (PQD), the Movimiento de Integración Demócrata (MID) and the Movimiento Popular Dominicano (MPD). The Alliance nominated Antonio Guzmán Fernández from the PRD as a presidential candidate and the retired General Elías Wessin y Wessin, an exponent of the 1962 coup against Bosch and the civil war of 1965, from the PQD as a candidate for the vice presidency.
In view of the expected victory of this opposition alliance, Balaguer launched an aggressive political persecution of the leaders and supporters of the Acuerdo de Santiago , namely those of the PRD. The military, who identified with Balaguer, wore a red scarf on the tip of the pistol to intimidate the “Peredistas”. Finally, the alliance withdrew its candidate Guzmán Fernández and the vice-presidential candidate Wessin y Wessin the day before the election.
He found a new “challenger” that Balaguer needed to legitimize the electoral process in Rear Admiral Homero Lajara Burgos, a former member of the PRD, who in 1970 was disappointed with Juan Bosch and did not participate in the 1970 presidential election, in which he wanted to run himself founded by Partido Demócrata Popular (PDP). He presented himself as a candidate for the PDP, the Movimiento Municipal del Pueblo, the Movimiento Voluntad Popular and the Unión Santiaguera y Independiente Bonaense.
Registration could no longer take place due to lack of time, but the Junta Central Electoral decided that the election should take place anyway. It was carried out by the party in power. Reportedly Balaguer won by 942,000 against 170,033 votes from Lajara Burgos.
1978 and 1982 with victories of the PRD
In 1978 the PRD nominated Antonio Guzmán Fernández again as a presidential candidate, who actually won this third election of the modern Dominican Republic and the first free one since 1962. At the end of its term of office, his government was considered one of the best in the history of the republic. Guzmán introduced important changes to promote the democratization of the country. In 1982, shortly before the end of his term of office, he took his own life, probably because of corruption allegations against exponents of the party, leaving the office to his Vice President Jacobo Majluta Azar , who became the fourth president since 1962, but the party-internal nomination for the following presidential election against Salvador Jorge Blanco lost.
In 1982 the PRD won the presidential election again with Jorge Blanco thanks to the good results of the Guzmán government and achieved an absolute majority in both chambers of the National Congress. Jorge Blanco became the fifth president to have been elected in free democratic elections since 1962. Manuel Fernández Mármol was elected Vice President.
1986-1996
After Jorge Blanco's government had gradually led the country towards national bankruptcy, Majluta again called for nomination as the official presidential candidate of the PRD in 1986. He won it against Peña Gómez after serious conflicts between the two camps, but was defeated in the presidential election by his rival Joaquín Balaguer, the great old man of Dominican politics who founded the Partido Reformista Social Cristiano (PRSC) in the same year and at the age of 80 after 1960–1961 and 1966–1978 was again elected president. The brutal internal struggle had alienated a large part of the PRD supporters from their party, and many previously loyal PRD voters did not vote for their own candidate.
In 1990 Peña Gómez was finally nominated by his party as an official presidential candidate, but was only third behind Balaguer and Bosch, who had now run for the Partido de la Liberación Dominicana (PLD).
In 1994 Peña Gómez ran again for president. He lost to Balaguer very narrowly in an irregular election. An investigation was conducted following international protests, the results of which raised serious concerns about the legality of the election. Balaguer was forced to agree in a "Pacto por la democracia" signed with Peña Gómez to halve his term of office and to resign as early as 1996, after a total of seven terms.
In the 1996 presidential election, after Balaguer's term of office was shortened to two years, Peña Gómez lost in the second ballot against Leonel Fernández from the PLD with 48.74 to 51.25%. Peña Gómez had led with 41.05 to 38.93% in the first ballot, but lost in the second because Leonel Fernández of Joaquín Balaguer, the political opponent of the party founder Bosch for over 30 years, who according to the "Pacto por la democracia" was not allowed to run for re-election, was supported in an agreement called "Frente Patriótico".
2000 with PRD victory
In the 2000 presidential election , Leonel Fernández could no longer stand for election because of the ban on direct re-election in force at the time. Instead, Danilo Medina ran for the PLD, against which the successor of the 1998 deceased Peña Gómez as leader of the PRD, Hipólito Mejía , prevailed. Mejía missed the absolute majority in the first ballot with 49.87%, which would have been necessary for the election as president. Since the third-placed Balaguer refused the PLD the support for the second ballot, which he had still granted in 1996, Medina waived the second ballot, which he judged to be hopeless, after he had only achieved 24.94% in the first in second place. The Senator of the Distrito Nacional , Milagros Ortiz Bosch, a niece of Juan Bosch, was elected Vice President and the first woman in this office. The PRD thus came back to power after 14 years in the opposition.
2004-2016
In 2004 the PRD lost the presidency again. Hipólito Mejía was able to run for re-election because the PRD, in view of the high approval rates Mejías achieved in his first two years in office in 2002, that the ban on the immediate re-election of the president was lifted again. The hope of re-election was dashed by the severe economic crisis in the second half of his term of office and by the split in the party over the dispute over the possibility of re-election of the president. Hatuey De Camps, the former party president who had called on his supporters to “vote for the devil and his brother rather than for Mejía's re-election,” said he would stick to his rejection of re-election, no matter what the cost. He and other members were then expelled from the party. Hipólito Mejía won only 33.65% of the vote and clearly missed a second term. Was elected Leonel Fernández of the PLD, won the 57.11% of the vote.
For the presidential election in 2008 , the PRD nominated Miguel Vargas Maldonado as its official candidate, after he had clearly won the internal party election against Milagros Ortiz Bosch. Leonel Fernández of the PLD was able to run again after the end of his term of office from 2004 to 2008, as the immediate re-election of the president for another term was now possible again. He won the election with 53.83% of the vote in the first ballot, Vargas Maldonado achieved 40.48%.
The 2012 presidential election led to a repetition of the duel of 2000 between Hipólito Mejía and Danilo Medina from the PLD with the opposite outcome: Danilo Medina just won the absolute majority in the first ballot, which meant that the runoff in a second ballot, which was supported by the constitution for the If there is provision for none of the candidates to achieve an absolute majority in the first ballot. He received 51.21% of the vote, Mejía 46.95%.
Before the 2016 presidential election , the PRD split in 2014 after a two-year dispute over the party leadership between party president Miguel Vargas and Hipólito Mejía. Mejía founded the Partido Revolucionario Moderno (PRM) together with Luis Abinader , and Abinader won the nomination for the PRM. The PRD saw no more possibility of running successfully with Vargas and joined the electoral alliance of the PLD. Its candidate, the incumbent President Danilo Medina, won the election very clearly with 61.74% of the votes in the first ballot before Abinader with 34.98%. The PRD contributed 5.86% to the winning result.
Parliamentary elections 1978–2016
In the parliamentary elections in 1982, 1998 and 2002, the PRD achieved an absolute majority in both chambers:
| elections | be right | MPs | of total | Senators | of total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1978 | 52.70% | 48 | 91 | 11 | 30th |
| 1982 | 51.70% | 62 | 120 | 17th | 30th |
| 1986 | 33.50% | 48 | 120 | 7th | 30th |
| 1990 | 32.30% | 33 | 120 | 2 | 30th |
| 1994 | 47.50% | 57 | 120 | 15th | 30th |
| 1998 | 51.30% | 83 | 149 | 24 | 31 |
| 2002 | 41.01% | 73 | 150 | 29 | 32 |
| 2006 1 | 31.03% | 43 | 178 | 6th | 32 |
| 2010 2 | 38.40% | 75 | 183 | 0 | 32 |
| 2016 3 | 5.86% | 17th | 190 | 0 | 32 |
Individual evidence
- ↑ Manuel Figueroa: Luchas internas por el poder han sido causa de divisiones. In: Listín Diario. May 26, 2015.
- ↑ Gustavo Olivo Peña: El PRD has sufrido 10 grandes crisis desde su fundación en el año 1939. In: acento.com.do. 20th July 2014.
- ^ Víctor Hugo Martínez González: Fisiones y fusiones, divorcios y reconciliaciones. La dirigencia del Partido Revolucionario Dominicano 1989-2004. Centro de Estudios Políticos y Sociales de Monterrey, Mexico, DF, 2005, ISBN 970-722-378-2 , p. 224 f. ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ a b PRD cumple 74 años en medio división. In: El Nacional. January 21, 2013.
- ^ Charles D. Ameringer: Caribbean Legion: Patriots, Politicians, Soldiers of Fortune, 1946–1950. The Pennsylvania State University Press, Pennsylvania 2010, ISBN 978-0-271-01452-4 , p. 28 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
- ↑ a b Historia. ( Memento of the original from June 17, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: PRD website. March 24, 2013.
- ↑ Ruddy González es el nuevo vocero diputados PRD ( Memento of June 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). In: Proceso. 23rd July 2014.
- ↑ César Medina: El almirante Lajara Burgos. In: Listín Diario. January 25, 2016.
- ↑ Carlos O. Pérez: Desconfianza en torno a la JCE ( Memento of 15 October 2011 at the Internet Archive ). In: Revista Ahora. March 24, 2003.
- ↑ James Ferguson: Obituary: Jacobo Majluta. In: The Independent . March 5, 1996.
- ^ Héctor Tineo N .: El dia que Balaguer y Peña Gómez firmaron el Pacto por la Democracia para poner fin a crisis postelectoral de 1994. In: Diario Dominicano. August 10, 2014.
- ^ A b Ana Belén Benito Sánchez: Elecciones Congresuales (1978-2010): Evolución de los Principales Indicadores. Resultados elecciones legislativas y municipales 2010, República Dominicana. University of Salamanca , Salamanca p. 10 f. (PDF; 69 kB).
- ^ David Gonzalez: Dominican Wins Presidency As Opponent Shuns Runoff. In: New York Times . May 19, 2000.
- ↑ Luis M. Cárdenas: Expulsan a Hatuey y Felipa del PRD por alta traición. In: Hoy. May 19, 2004.
- ↑ Sorange Batista: 2004: Leonel derrotó a Hipólito. In: Hoy. May 6, 2012.
- ↑ Liderazgo político valora conducta del electorado. In: Listín Diario. May 21, 2012
- ↑ Hans-Ulrich Dillmann : Papá is not coming back. In: Latin America News . No. 456, June 1, 2012 (archived on the website of Hans-Ulrich Dillmann).
- ↑ Boletín Nacional Electoral No. 14 ( Memento of the original from May 31, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. the Junta Central Electoral (PDF; 50 kB). May 28, 2016.
- ↑ Informe PRD Elecciones 2016. ( Memento of the original from June 17, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: PRD website. May 30, 2016.
