The presidential candidate of the PRD, Hipólito Mejía defended his colorful language. He said it helps him better communicate with the Dominican people. "I want to be Hipólito, the farmer who knows the difficulties the people who work the fields have to go through, whose family still resides in the countryside, and whose activities have taken place in the farm lands, and now in the barrios to where government misfortunes have pushed these people to migrate and abandon their farms and try to survive in contaminated areas." He criticized the unsanitary conditions of the slums that farmers have moved to, and that the constant power failures have made contamination even worse. Mejía addressed the Haitian issue saying that it has to be seen "like a marriage, where there is no divorce an island separated by a frontier of a hundred and a half of kilometers through which anyone who wants can enter and leave. He said relations with Haiti have to be treated delicately, with much judgement, creativity and sincerity." He also urged that the Executive Branch clearly explain the financial situation of the Central Bank and the Banco de Reservas. He said that the Banco de Reservas has been financing the RD$25,000 million internal debt of the government in order to help it make payments to contractors of public works. (Minister of Finance Daniel Toribio denied these allegations.) He criticized that the government had unfulfilled its contracts with suppliers, contractors, farm producers, public work services and the private electricity generators. Most polls show Mejía is the man to beat in the next presidential election, spoke when being appointed presidential candidate of the Partido Demócrata Popular, a minority party.
