The candidate to mayor for the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD), Dr. José Francisco Peña Gómez said at the American Chamber of Commerce luncheon on 6 May that if he wins the city government, (polls show he leads by 7 points), his priorities will be to resolve the potable water, environment, garbage collecting and civic education problems of Santo Domingo. Peña Gómez was mayor of Santo Domingo from 1982-1986 under the then President Salvador Jorge Blanco administration. In his talk before the business audience, 62-year old Peña Gómez said that he would work in harmony with his adversaries, the members of the Partido Reformista Social Cristiano (PRSC). Factions within the PRSC and the PRD seem to have an under-the-table agreement in regards to the municipal and congressional elections. The PRSC allied with the PLD in the 1996 presidential elections, leading the PLD to a victory. "Now that we have better relations with that party, whose candidate to mayor, Rafael Corporán de los Santos, besides being a rival is a decent and considerate person, so we expect the best of understanding between these two political forces, that now have the mission of stopping a party’s intent to establish a dictatorship with improvised, immature and violent persons," he said, in apparent reference to the government party, the Partido de la Liberación Dominicana. Peña explained that in politics, "the foe of today can be the friend of tomorrow, and the other way around." He said this reality explains the respect for each other that the PRSC and the PRD have shown in this campaign, in contrast with the violence of the PLD representatives. "Because regardless of the crudity of the electoral campaign and the fights that will precede the year 2000 elections, it will be essential that both the municipal executive and the nation’s executive be able to place themselves above individual party interests, giving priority to the capital city and the nation that will require the best of understanding and reciprocal cooperation so that good government may come before politics, and not the other way around," he said. He promised to execute a master urban development plan to order the city’s territory. He also said he would open offices abroad in order to channel the assistance of friendly city halls in the larger cities of Europe and the United States. "We also propose the quick reconstruction and construction of produce markets, especially in distribution centers to avoid that large trucks enter the center of the city," he said.
