Analyzing the mid-term election

[NewsWhore]

Sociologist and political analyst Rosario Espinal publishes an analysis of the recent congressional election from the perspective of whether it is worthwhile continuing to hold them two years after the Presidential election. The argument for the separation was that the strength of the Presidential candidates would drag the congressional and municipal candidacies, not giving these their own weight. But, Rosario Espinal in a recent commentary in Hoy newspaper, says that the experience has shown that this could be quite the opposite. In her opinion, the separate elections weaken democracy in the DR. The explanation is that the government, knowing that the half-term election is a poll on how they are doing in their first two years, has no qualms about investing taxpayer money into ensuring that they do well in the election. This was evidenced when Hipolito Mejia won Congress at his half-term, and now again when Fernandez won a majority in Congress at his half-term. Her conclusion: "clientelism is a constant." She opposes the half-term election because it subjects the population to constant electioneering at a high cost to society, which eventually ends up paying for the political campaigns. She says that in half-term elections, abstention is twice as high as in the Presidential election. "The most important factor that influences when voters vote for Congress members, be it in separate or unified elections, is the popularity of the political party and/or the President. The local leaderships benefit from this popularity and only in special cases can local leaders sustain majority support when their parties experience an important decline in popularity," she writes. She explains that this evidence and the impact on the composition of Congress should be taken into account when evaluating the Dominican electoral system. She hopes that those who defend the separation of the Presidential from the municipal and Congressional elections think through the negative effects of the system that was imposed as part of the constitutional reform of 1994. In her opinion, the separation of elections benefits the politicians more than it does the population, and the constant electoral activity does not equal better government, she concludes.

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