Opposition Presidential candidate, the PLD’s Leonel Fernandez, said that the IMF agreement was “the only way out” for the country. He described the pact as “the lesser of two evils” and compared it to “open heart surgery without an anaesthetic, with the only other option being death. Speaking in New York, he expressed firm opposition to the idea of a dollarized economy, asking, “Where would the dollars come from?” Fernandez referred to the examples of El Salvador and Ecuador, both of which have dollarized their economies. El Salvador did so at a time of economic growth, and has had a successful experience. By contrast, the Ecuadorian experience was fraught with problems because it was implemented at a time of economic crisis. He said that “changing currency mid-crisis gives the people a sense of failure and a loss of sovereignty.” Fernandez furthermore attributed the Dominican economic crisis to unrestrained government spending and the increase in internal and external debts. He said the solutions were to reduce public spending and cap public credit in the private national banking sector. Once this has been achieved, according to the former President, “much of the US$2 billion which left the economy will return, and this in turn will reduce the exchange rate by several points.”