He Is to Retake the Reins in Dominican Republic : Balaguer, at 78, Turns Career From Twilight to a New Dawn

When Joaquin Balaguer lost the presidency of the Dominican Republic in 1978, at the age of 70, a long and remarkable political career appeared to have reached its twilight.

But a new political life has begun for Balaguer, even though at 78 he is frail and blind. With his narrow victory in the May 16 election, he will become the oldest head of government in the Western Hemisphere.

During his public career of more than half a century, Balaguer has served both dictatorship and democracy. He was the last figurehead president under Gen. Rafael Trujillo, who ruled the Dominican Republic for 31 years. And he was the first elected president in the present era of democracy, which began after the civil war of 1965.

Governed for 12 Years

He governed for 12 consecutive years, until mid-1978, and the peaceful transfer of power consolidated the Dominican Republic’s status as the largest democracy in the Caribbean.

Balaguer is a small, white-haired man, serious and soft-spoken. He wears dark suits and narrow-brimmed fedoras.

Flanked by aides and bodyguards, he takes long daily walks in a shady park that was built by his government. On Saturdays, he visits his mother’s grave. Like most Dominicans, he is a Roman 1130460264only occasionally.

He lives and works in a drab gray house of two stories that stands behind a similar house where two of his sisters live. His meals are taken to him on a tray from his sisters’ kitchen.

‘Very Austere Man’

Congressman Federico Antun, a family friend and a member of Balaguer’s party, says he “has been a very austere man all his life.”

Balaguer, a lifelong bachelor, has been a diplomat, a Cabinet minister, a professor and a writer. He is the author of dozens of books of prose and poetry.

His most avid followers revere him as a caudillo, a master politician who leads by the strength of his personality and his political prowess. They call him “the doctor,” a reference to his degree in law.

Despite his age, Balaguer’s intellect and memory are said to be as strong as ever.

‘Incredible Memory’

“He is an incredibly bright guy,” a foreign economist said. “The fact that he can’t see obviously diminishes his effectiveness, but he has an incredible memory, and he captures things very quickly.”

Another foreigner, who was on hand last month for a speech Balaguer delivered to a group of businessmen, said: “Mentally, he is very sharp. After about 20 minutes, he got wound up. He was hitting the table and raising his voice. It was the caudillo; it was just incredible.”

Balaguer’s policies are pro-business, pro-United States and anti-Communist. As president, he was an economic conservative who took pride in his balanced budgets and low foreign debt. He was also a populist. His government bought and redistributed land to peasants, and it instituted a year-end bonus for workers.

Many Dominicans recall the Balaguer years as times of prosperity. Sugar, the country’s main export, was selling at high prices on the world market in the late 1970s. Construction boomed, and unemployment was considerably lower than today’s estimated 28% or more.

Rebuilt the Capital

Balaguer carried out an impressive program of public works, rebuilding the capital, which had been ravaged by the civil war, expanding public housing and extending the road system.

But there was a dark side to the Balaguer years. Security forces used harsh measures against leftist opponents of the government. Hundreds were held as political prisoners, according to Haffe Serulle, a former president of the Dominican Union for the Defense of Human Rights.

“The jails were full of young people who were not really Communists,” Serulle recalled in an interview. “Many of them were brutally beaten.”

He said many leftists who fought in the civil war were systematically killed by death squads in the years after the war.

“Balaguer himself said there were groups that he could not control,” Serulle said. “He didn’t say what kind of groups, but we understood that they were groups of policemen.”

Repression of Leftists

According to Serulle, the security forces were coached in repression of leftists by U.S. military and intelligence advisers, and he accused Balaguer of complicity for “accepting and not criticizing that situation.”

Others argue that the repression was carried out in response to leftist attempts, sometimes violent, to undermine the government.

“The Balaguer government faced a wave of terrorism,” recalled Rafael Herrera, editor of the newspaper Listin Diario. “That made for tougher repression.”

Leftist violence is no longer a problem, but Balaguer’s age and blindness raise other questions.

“The problem is whether this Balaguer, eight years later, (and) blind, will be an effective head of government,” Herrera said.

In a campaign speech earlier this month, Balaguer said that glaucoma has been causing his vision to deteriorate since the 1960s.

Cannot Read Documents

“There are days when I see black and distinguish the face of a person but see it dark, and there are other days when I see it completely white,” he said. “My problem is that I cannot read, that my vision cannot distinguish letters in order to read a document.”

When he voted on May 16, an aide guided his hand to deposit his vote in the ballot box.

In the campaign, Balaguer’s opponents said that he suffered from high blood pressure and other ailments. In response, Balaguer published reports from physicians that indicated no serious health problems.

Officials of Balaguer’s party have hinted that he will share power with his vice president, Carlos Morales, 45.

Vice President’s Role

Morales was president of the country’s largest private sugar company until March, when he became Balaguer’s campaign manager and vice presidential candidate. Morales said in an interview before the election that he expects to play an important role in Balaguer’s new administration.

“He knows me very well, and he knows my temperament, and he knows my temperament is not to be a ceremonial vice president,” Morales said. “He says that he wants to take advantage of my technical and administrative skills.”

Balaguer was born in the town of Villa Bisono, in the central province of Santiago, on Sept. 1, 1907. His father, an immigrant from Puerto Rico, was a local merchant.

At age 14, Balaguer published his first book of poems, titled “Pagan Psalms.” After graduating from law school in the Dominican Republic, he received his doctorate in law from the Sorbonne in Paris.

Teacher, Ambassador

Trujillo took power in 1930, and two years later Balaguer entered the diplomatic service. For two years in the late 1930s, he taught at the University of Santo Domingo, then resumed his career as a diplomat, serving as ambassador to several Latin American countries.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he served in Trujillo’s Cabinet as secretary of education, secretary of foreign affairs and secretary of state of the presidency.

Trujillo staged controlled elections in 1957, giving his brother Hector the title of president and making Balaguer vice president. When Hector Trujillo resigned in 1960, Balaguer moved up to the presidency, serving as a figurehead without real power.

Dominican history does not depict Balaguer as a villain in Rafael Trujillo’s ruthless and venal regime.

At Trujillo’s Side

“Balaguer was at Trujillo’s side,” said Anibal de Castro, editor of the newspaper Ultima Hora. “Nevertheless, no one accuses Balaguer of participating in the bloody repression then or of stealing public funds. He was the typical intellectual who served the dictatorship without compromising himself with it.”

After Trujillo was assassinated, on May 30, 1961, Balaguer remained in office while the Trujillo family tried to retain power.

“Balaguer was the one who got the Trujillos out of the country,” De Castro said.

Balaguer was forced into exile in January, 1962. Later that year, while Balaguer was living in New York, Juan Bosch of the leftist Dominican Revolutionary Party won the presidential election by a landslide. A military coup deposed Bosch seven months after he took power, and an attempt to bring him back to power triggered the 1965 civil war.

Took 57% of Vote

Balaguer returned to the Dominican Republic during the war and began organizing his Reformist Party. In the elections of 1966, he won 57% of the vote to Bosch’s 37%. Balaguer easily won reelection in 1970 and 1974, when Bosch and the Revolutionary Party refused to run.

In 1978, the Revolutionary Party candidate, Antonio Guzman, won 52% of the votes to Balaguer’s 42%. The armed forces stopped the vote-counting in an attempt to keep Balaguer in power, but he dissociated himself from the intervention and accepted defeat. In 1982, the Revolutionary Party’s Salvador Jorge Blanco won 47% of the vote to Balaguer’s 37%.

‘The problem is whether Balaguer, eight years later, will be an effective head of government.’