Dominican Political Foes, Seeking Presidency, Put Stranglehold on Government

Under the dizzying glare of the Caribbean sun, the Dominican Republic sometimes seems to slip into the realm of unreality.

Twenty years ago, for instance, a typical Latin American coup here turned into a civil war, and suddenly there were 22,000 U.S. troops in the fray. Today, a man who helped spark that conflict is a leading contender for the Dominican presidency.

Another phenomenon has become a legal nightmare this summer. The country’s judges are on strike. As a result, the courts are paralyzed and the jails are overflowing. Hundreds of untried prisoners have had to be released without being arraigned or posting bond.

Even before the strike, the Dominican judicial system was a mess, according to Fernando Hernandez Diaz, president of the Dominican Bar Assn.

Judges Poorly Paid

There are 330 judges in this country of 6 million people and, because they are appointed by the Senate, Hernandez Diaz said, most of them are not politically independent. Because they are paid so little, he said, many are corrupt.

“If we go on this way, pretty soon no one will believe either in the law or in the democratic system,” he said.

And Tomas Pastoriza, a prominent Dominican businessman, observed that without justice, there can be no democracy.

The purchasing power of most Dominicans has been eroded dramatically in the past two years because of inflation. Judges are no exception, and their salaries were low to begin with--the equivalent of $133 to $333 a month.

The judges are demanding increases that would roughly double their pay. This seems reasonable to most people, but the raise has been stalled by a feud between the country’s two most powerful men.

Long-Running Rivalry

These are President Salvador Jorge Blanco and Jacobo Majluta, the president of the Senate. Their rivalry has disrupted the administrative and legislative processes for three years even though, ironically, they belong to the same party.

A bill to raise the salaries of judges was approved in July by the Senate, which is controlled by Majluta, but it has been stalled in the lower house of Congress, which is controlled by supporters of Jorge Blanco.

Even if the bill is approved by the lower house, Jorge Blanco may veto it. He refuses to approve any measure calling for increased government spending unless there is some provision for increasing government revenues. The Senate refuses to approve any tax increase.

“With the money that exists in the national budget, salaries cannot be increased for the judges or for anyone,” Luis Gonzalez Fabra, the president’s spokesman, said.

Majluta is playing a “very crude” opposition role, Gonzalez Fabra said, adding, “He has obstructed the social development of the country.”

Majluta calls Jorge Blanco the worst president in Dominican history.

Style Called Arrogant

“His style is extremely haughty, arrogant, argumentative,” the Senate leader said in an interview. “No day goes by that the government isn’t fighting with someone.”

Majluta, 50, wants to be president. He was elected vice president in 1978 and served in the presidency for 45 days in 1982 after President Antonio Guzman committed suicide. According to Majluta, Jorge Blanco is obsessed with keeping him out of the presidency.

The Dominican Revolutionary Party, to which both belong, will choose its presidential candidate in December. Majluta is among those considered likely to get the nomination.

But so is Jose Francisco Pena Gomez, once so controversial a figure that he dared not aspire to high office. In 1963, Pena Gomez was secretary general of the Dominican Revolutionary Party, or PRD, when it won the election that followed the assassination of the dictator Rafael Trujillo. Juan Bosch, the PRD candidate, was inaugurated but deposed seven months afterward in a military coup.

Civil War Erupts

A provisional triumvirate then ruled the country until 1965, when the civil war erupted over an attempt to restore Bosch to the presidency. At the time, Pena Gomez was the moderator of a popular political program on a Santo Domingo radio station, and he called on the people to go into the streets in support of Bosch.

Pena Gomez became known in conservative quarters as a rabble-rousing radical, but he continued to be a popular and effective party organizer.

The fact that Pena Gomez is black was once considered a political liability. About 70% of the Dominican people are black but, nonetheless, it was widely believed that a black could not be elected president here. Pena Gomez said that Dominican racial pride makes such a concept obsolete.

“If being black could have been an obstacle, it has become an advantage,” he said in an interview.

Landslide Election Victory

Pena Gomez proved his electoral strength in 1982, when he was elected mayor of Santo Domingo by a landslide. Last spring he suffered a heart attack but now says he is fully recovered and ready to campaign for the presidency.

President Jorge Blanco is backing Pena Gomez. “We support him totally,” Gonzalez Fabra, the presidential spokesman, said. “He is the official candidate.”

Whoever wins the PRD nomination will probably face former President Joaquin Balaguer in the May elections.

Balaguer, 77 and blind, was a figurehead president under Trujillo, and served for 12 years as president after the civil war, until his defeat in 1978. It appeared then that his political career was at an end.

Somehow, though, Balaguer is seen today as a formidable contender. Memories of popular discontent in his last years in office have been blurred by time, and hardships during the past three years have fueled nostalgia for the economic stability of his administration.

Bosch, who was overthrown in 1963, is also expected to run. But Bosch, now a self-proclaimed Marxist and head of the Dominican Liberation Party, is given no chance of winning.

Last Chance for Democracy

Many politicians are talking about the 1986 election as a last chance for democracy in this country. They say that the system is endangered by economic crisis and social unrest.

“If there are no major reforms, it can explode in four or five years,” Pena Gomez said.

And Majluta forecast, “If there is not some kind of improvement for the national majority, the situation is going to degenerate into violence.”

In April, 1984, austerity measures imposed by the government provoked riots in which at least 86 people were killed. The austerity has continued, and devaluation of the currency has aggravated the rate of inflation.

The austerity measures and the devaluation were among steps the International Monetary Fund insisted on before it would extend credits to prop up the country’s financial system. The government owes $3 billion abroad, though in the past year it has renegotiated payment of more than $1 billion of this.

Economic Woes Continue

The country’s finances are now on a better footing, but the economic crisis is not over. Inflation is expected to be more than 25% in 1985 for the second year in a row. Wages are lagging far behind and unemployment is estimated at 25% to 30%.

In February, the government proposed to increase luxury taxes to finance a raise in the minimum wage. The Senate refused to approve it.

In July, the government went ahead and raised the minimum wage, from $58 to $83 a month, in an effort to defuse a nationwide general strike. To finance the raise, Jorge Blanco dipped into the cash reserve of a government-owned gold mining company.

Congress has now enacted a law raising the pay of 2,500 government agronomists, who have been on strike for two months. But the law provides no financing, and the gold mining company has no more cash reserve.