Dominican Political Parties

[Frank the Tank]

With all of the threads talking about politics and presidential candidates it has gotten me a little interested in Dominican politics. Being a neophyte in this area, what are the differences between parties? What are their basic philosophies(besides ripping off the country). Besides PLD, PRC, and PRSC are there any others?? Thank to everyone who answers my questions and satisfies my curiosity.

[frank alvarez]

The PRD (Partido Revolucionario Dominicano/Dominican Revolutionary Party)
was founded by Juan Bosch, in exile from the Trujillo dictatorship a long time ago. He came back to the DR in 61 right after the assasination of the dictator (I was there when he arrived in his hometown, La Vega, when I was 12--I had no idea who he was then). This man was a very honest intellectual who leaned to the left but was nowhere near the Communist that the U.S. government and the DR right tried to portray him as being. They successfully used it to throw him out of power 7 months after winning the first elections after the end of the dictatorship in 1962.

He started to lose control of his party as it grew and the undesirables started taking over and perverting the good ideals under which it was founded. No better proof of its steady decline than the lousy PRD government we had from 2000-2004; and the other 2 previous PRD governments. Total disaster.

In 1973, Juan Bosch founded the PLD (Partido de la Liberacion Dominicana/
Dominican Liberation Party) which was, until the last few years, a small clique of people educated by the party to serve the country. It has grown in size recently and is becoming tinted by some of the riff-raff types that abound in the other two parties. They have governed from 1996-2000 and are now in power, as you know, and, in my belief, the best far and above the other two major parties.

The third, PRSC (Partido Reformista Social Cristiano/Social Christian Reform Party) was founded by the dictator's own long-time collaborator who inherited his legacy and governed us for 22 of 30 years from 1966 to 1996.
This was Joaquin Balaguer who was born in 1906 and was governing us into his 90's, blind for many years and almost a total invalid (probably the only case in modern world history and shamed me then and shames me now that Dominicans could not find one other person to lead them!). Their alleged philosophy is a party of the people, just like the PRD, but basically it is a conglomeration of personal and party interests looking for ways to steal the people's resources.

There are many small parties that don't add up to anything but work their 'magic' to obtain favors from the 3 big parties as allies and share in the feast of the government pie. As simple as that.

[Frank the Tank]

Thanks for the history lesson. I have now have some background to understand what is going on now. Much appreciated.

[Rick Snyder]

fko 1, frank alvarez gave us an outstanding summarization of the political parties in this country but I feel that I must add to his post. At present there are over 300 political parties in this country and because of the way the laws are drawn up they all receive money from the government. Many of these other parties were formed and are lead by people that hold high offices in the government and belong to other parties. Just another way to milk the golden cow.

Because of the way Hippo was acting when he was president there were and are a number of PRD party members that didn't want him reelected and this divided the PRD party and Mejía’s PPH faction was formed within the PRD to get Hippo reelected. Because of this turmoil the dissident ousted president of the PRD, Hatuey de Camps, started his own party the PRSD, (Partido Revolucionario Social Democrata). The best thing about the PRSD, as I see it, is that Hatuey de Camps has gone public and stated that he would not allow political corruption within his party. He did not say no political corruption if he is elected president of the DR but none within his political party. This in essence gives the Dominican people the opportunity to watch and to put this mans feet to the fire to insure that he lives by his word. If corruption can in fact be weeded out of a political party they there is a chance of that party being able to win. Can this happen? Will this happen? The Dominican people could make it happen but will they? Hehehehehehe!

Sorry but I don't remember what the PPH stands for, maybe postpartum hemorrhage or Primary Pulmonary Hypertension but I don't think so.

At look at Hippos caracter can be seen at (Mejía on the attack) at:
http://www.dr1.com/news/2003/dnews090103.shtml#3