Freedom in the World 2001 - Dominican Republic

2001 Scores

Status: Free
Freedom Rating: 2.0
Civil Liberties: 2
Political Rights: 2

Ratings Change

The Dominican Republic's civil liberties rating changed from 3 to 2 due to willingness to successfully prosecute a former senior military officer and to improvements in the criminal justice system.

Overview

Hipolito Mejia, the center-left candidate of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), swept to power in the May 16, 2000, presidential elections. He crowned his party's virtual lock on power at all levels of government by promising to use the Dominican Republic's seven percent annual economic growth rate to promote more social spending, and to review the privatizations undertaken by his predecessor, Lionel Fernandez, of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD). Mejia came within a hairsbreadth of the 50 percent of the votes plus one needed to win an absolute majority in the first round of the presidential contest. The second- and third-place contenders surprised the country by announcing, after a bitterly fought contest, to not force a run-off vote.

After achieving independence from Spain in 1821 and from Haiti in 1844, the Dominican Republic endured recurrent domestic conflict. The assassination of General Rafael Trujillo in 1961 ended 30 years of dictatorship, but a 1963 military coup led to civil war and U.S. intervention. In 1966, under a new constitution, civilian rule was restored with the election of the conservative Joaquin Balaguer.

The constitution provides for a president and a congress elected for four years. The congress consists of a 30-member senate and, as a result of a recent census, a house that in 1998 went from 120 members to 149. Balaguer was reelected in 1970 and 1974, but was defeated in 1978 by Silvestre Antonio Guzman of the social-democratic PRD. The PRD was triumphant again in 1982 with the election of Salvador Jorge Blanco, but Balaguer, heading the right-wing Social Christian Reformist Party (PRSC), returned to power in 1986 and was reelected in 1990 in a vote marred by fraud.

In the May 1994 election, the main contenders were Balaguer, fellow-octogenarian Juan Bosch of the PLD, and the PRD's José Francisco Peña Gomez. The Balaguer machine attacked front-runner Peña Gomez, who was black, as a Haitian who secretly planned to unite the neighboring countries. Balaguer was declared the winner by a few thousand votes in an election rife with fraud. Amid street protests and international pressure, Balaguer agreed to hold new presidential elections in 18 months. The legislative results stood. The PRD and its allies took 57 seats in the house and 15 in the senate; the PRSC, 50 and 14; and the PLD, 13 and 1.

When congress convened, the PLD backed the PRSC's plan to lengthen Balaguer's shortened term from 18 months to two years, with elections in May 1996. In exchange, Balaguer made a PLD legislator president of the house. The PRD protested, but tacitly conceded by announcing that Peña Gomez would again be its standard-bearer in 1996.

Vice President Jacinto Peynado won the PRSC primary in 1995. The PLD's lavish spending campaign tended to confirm the view that the money was coming from Balaguer, who wanted to stop Peña Gomez, and thus avoid any future corruption investigation. In promoting its candidate, Leonel Fernandez, a U.S.-trained lawyer, the PLD took a page from the race-baiting book of the PRSC. In May 1996, Peña Gomez won 45.9 percent of the vote; Fernandez, 38.9 percent; and Peynado, 15 percent. Fernandez won 51.3 percent, and the presidency, in a May 16, 1996, runoff.

The May 1998 legislative and municipal elections were held for the first time since Balaguer was forced to cut short his term. The campaign was violent; more than a dozen people were killed, mostly in clashes between PRD and PRSC groups. Pena Gomez died of natural causes on election eve. Because of the resulting sympathy vote, the PRD made a clean sweep of the legislative contest, although the ruling PLD actually increased its parliamentary strength and maintained enough votes to uphold presidential vetoes.

Fernandez's program of economic liberalization spurred the fastest-growing economy in Latin America. His government also won plaudits for efforts to reach out beyond his party to create consensus around social issues and to improve the administration of justice. However, critics charged that a wave of foreign investments were mishandled.

In the May 2000 presidential elections, Mejia, a former agriculture minister and a PRD outsider, struck a chord among those who felt left out by the economic prosperity, particularly the 20 percent who live below the poverty level. Mejia won 49.87 percent of the vote, compared to 24.9 percent for ruling party candidate Danilo Medina and 24.6 percent for Balaguer, who was running for his eighth term in office. He named a cabinet containing both long-term PRD stalwarts and young reformers, and promised to make good on his pledges to fight graft, create jobs and invest in housing and other public works projects.

Political Rights and Civil Liberties

Citizens of the Dominican Republic can change their government through elections. Although the country has a history of fraudulent elections, the run-up to the May 2000 presidential elections was marked by heightened tension and outbreaks of interparty violence, the balloting was considered by international observers to have been free and fair. Constitutional guarantees regarding free expression, freedom of religion, and the right to organize political parties and civic groups are generally respected. Civil society organizations in the Dominican Republic are some of the most well-organized and effective in Latin America. However, the violent political campaigns, the frequent government-labor clashes, and repressive measures taken by police and the military mean that free expression is somewhat circumscribed.

The media are mostly private. Newspapers are independent and diverse but subject to government pressure through denial of advertising revenues and imposition of taxes on imported newsprint. Dozens of radio stations and at least six commercial television stations broadcast. In 1997 the National Commission on Public Events and Radio Broadcasting shut down dozens of programs with religious-magic content.

The judiciary, headed by a supreme court, is politicized and riddled with corruption, although significantly less so in recent years. The courts offer little recourse to those without money or influence, although reforms implemented of late show some promise in increasing citizen access to the courts. Prisons, in which nine out of ten inmates have not been convicted of a crime, are grossly overcrowded, with poor health and sanitary conditions, and violence is routine. Torture and arbitrary arrest lead the complaints against the security forces, which are militarized and sometimes operate outside the civilian chain of command. Extrajudicial executions of common criminals is a problem which remains largely unaddressed, in part because the government, the media, and others appear concerned that attention to the issue will negatively affect the tourism industry. In one case, a Dominican related to a high-ranking police officer fled back to the island after being accused of murder in New York City; he remained in hiding and, it is believed, may enjoy some official protection. On a positive note, in August 2000 a retired general and three accomplices were sentenced to long jail terms for the murder in 1975 of an opposition journalist, a move that dented the aura of impunity for human rights violators from the Balaguer period.

In September 1997 Fernandez moved to clean up the country's antinarcotics forces and to restructure the supreme court in an effort to root out corruption and to reduce growing complaints of human rights abuses by the police. He led the effort in his role as chairman of the National Judicial Council, which oversees judicial appointments. Responsibility for appointing judges was in the past held by the senate, which tended to increase politicization and de-emphasize professional criteria. The supreme court has now assumed this role.

Labor unions are well organized. Although legally permitted to strike, they are often subject to government crackdowns. Peasant unions are occasionally targeted by armed groups working for large landowners.

Haitians, including children, work in appalling conditions on state-run sugar plantations, and their movement is restricted by the Dominican government. A 1992 labor code recognizes sugar workers' right to organize, but abuses continue. Dominican officials say as many as 400,000 Haitians work as illegal aliens, primarily on the plantations and in agriculture, out of a total of between 1 million and 1.5 million living in the Dominican Republic. The children of Haitian immigrants born in the Dominican Republic are refused legal residency by authorities in an application of what the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States called a "restrictive interpretation" of the Dominican constitution. The denial of residency affects more than 250,000 children.

Violence and discrimination against women is a serious problem, as are trafficking in women and girls, child prostitution, and child abuse.