martes, 3 de junio de 2008

Elections, and other things

I’m not big on being sentimental. But it was nice otherwise to see my parents and my brother when they visited this month. It has been the longest I had gone without seeing my family – almost eight months. Except for seeing some cousins who went to a beach resort in January, this was the first time I saw anyone from home. I think it is essential that families of Peace Corps Volunteers visit them, if it is financially possible. Volunteers’ lives are vastly different from the ones they formerly led, and while they speak passionately about what they do on the phone and publish various pictures online, there is no substitute for understanding than through a visit. What does it actually mean that you eat this food every day, twice a day, half the time in the dark? How could anyone possibly do (fill in the blank with some foreign cultural activity)? Don’t you miss the internet? And toilets? Without a visit, we volunteers can just give you some great stories in a vacuum, without context. I can wax poetic, or complain up a storm, but it seems like fantasy. I think this is most pertinent with family, who tend to worry more than the kids with whom you drank at college, who know you are pretty tough when it comes to challenges.

On a different note, May 16 was election day. The incumbent, Leonel Fernandez, of the PLD (Dominican Liberation Party) was looking for a second consecutive term, and a third overall. He was in office 1996—2000, when he lost the election to the opposition Hipólito Mejía of the PRD (Dominican Revolutionary Party). Mejía presided over a miserable economic decline and rampant corruption. Some say the decline was caused by policies of Leonel, as he is affectionately called, but Leonel expertly pinned the blame on Mejía, and defeated him in 2004. Ironically, Mejía changed the constitution to allow for reelection, only to be defeated; now his opponent is using it to his own advantage.

Anyway, this recent election was fascinating. I arrived here in September, and even by then the campaigning was in full swing. posters were everywhere, and political commercials strangled the airwaves. Through baseball’s Winter League season, all of the commercials were baseball-themed. Candidates hit home runs while their opponents struck out. The crowd cheers wildly. I suppose they are not big on deep metaphors. This is supported by the commercial in which Leonel is a massive mountain, and his oppoenet, Miguel Vargas, is a punt egg that rolls across the screen, hits the Leonel Mountain, and breaks into a million insignificant little pieces. We all got that one. Inconspicuously, every conceivable government agency produced an overwhelming number of advertisements on all the incredible things that happen to have been accomplished in the past four years

The third party candidate, aptly named Amable (“friendly), shaped his campaign like so: arriving in a helicopter, blowing over someone’s trees, giving a firebrand speech (he claimed he was “Presidente de los Pobres”), and handing out chicken, sausage, and cash. Early polls indicated he was headed for 20% of the vote, but thankfully he ended up with just about 5%.

May 16 rolled around. The mood here was pretty tense, especially since staple prices have risen sharply of late. Dominicans celebrated the day like most other holidays: most people voted early, then return home to drink. Apparently it is a custom for women to vote very early to make sure they come home in time to cook lunch. Election monitoring is great here – members of each party descend on the polling places, claiming to be non-partisan but end up bullying voters and buying votes. My neighbor sold his for 600 pesos, or $18.

Leonel ended up winning 54% to 40 %. The opposition candidate conceded the same evening, even with scattered reports of irregularities. It is said that Leonel, whose party has a majority in the Legislature, is looking to amend the constitution to allow for a third consecutive term. Judges are all political appointments. Oh well. At least there wasn’t too much violence.