With just 36 days remaining before the election, the pace of the presidential campaign is picking up. Over the weekend, the candidates criss-crossed the country seeking votes. PLD party candidate Danilo Medina, headed east to La Altagracia and El Seibo Provinces, where he told crowds of supporters that the PRD would "drag the nation into an abyss of poverty and anarchy" if it were to win the election, and urged voters not to go "backwards." Medina also attacked PRD candidate Hipolito Mejia as "fearful" of meeting him in a public debate. For his part, Mejia addressed an enormous throng in Santo Domingo on Sunday. The event was jointly sponsored by two women’s organizations, known as the Feminine Campaign Command and the Women’s Social Democratic Federation. Standing beside his running mate, Milagros Ortiz Bosch – the only woman with a place on a major party ticket – Mejia promised to "make the Dominican woman what I’ve made of my own daughters; educated and capable of competing as equals." And he added that men had better "be prepared to share the government with women.’ Ramon Almanzar, candidate of the left wing New Alternative Party, campaigned on Saturday in the eastern cities of Higuey, El Seibo and Hato Mayor, and on Sunday led marches in the northern cities of Nagua and Moca. Almanzar said that the three major parties all embody the values of "neo-liberalism" that favor the "haves" over the "have nots." He also alleged that the ruling PLD party was planning to remain in power irrespective of the outcome of the May 16th elections. The PRSC candidate, nonagenarian Joaquin Balaguer, whose campaign exertions are restricted due to his physical limitations, headed north to Puerto Plata, where on Sunday he told a rally to vote for "patience, moderation and, above all, the ascendancy of Dominicans over foreigners." He left no doubt as to the identity of the "foreigners" when he warned that the DR must not be allowed to go the way of neighboring Haiti by destroying its natural resources.
