Fernandez's defeat can lead to a political reconfiguration

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC - In Brief 11 Oct 2019 by Pavel Isa

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The electoral board is preparing to declare, Gonzalo Castillo as presidential candidate of the PLD. The final count gave Castillo an advantage over former President Fernandez of just 1.4%. Fernández was simply overpowered by President Danilo Medina and his candidate, who seem to have used all the might of the State to achieve it. As indicated in the previous brief, Fernández denounced the results as fraudulent and now is demanding new elections even as the board did just what he asked for: a manual recount which confirmed the initial results. Fernández has been unable to provide convincing arguments or evidence of such claims. Thursday night, the Superior Electoral Court gave the final thrust to Fernández's assertion by dismissing the lawsuit he filed against the electoral board, the PLD (party he presides over) and Castillo. Faced with this result, there is a high probability that the PLD will end up formally divided and Fernandez will leave the party and create his own political project. After all, he won almost 50% of the votes in the biggest party in the country. Although part of that support is likely to disappear as a part of his base ends up accepting defeat and supporting the winning candidate, the net effect will be a weakening of the PLD. In contrast, the PRM emerged relatively strengthened from the primaries. Abinader won with wide margin over former President Mejia, who immediately recognized the defeat and called to join the effort to get the PLD out of power. With Fernández's defeat, Danilo Medina's plan B is consummated. Plan A was to modify the constitution and run again but failed. The next objective is for Castillo to defeat the opposition in the nati...