Hatuey Decamps, who has been thwarted in his attempts to become the PRD candidate and ousted from his position as party President by President Hipolito Mejia, declared yesterday that he thought the opinion poll by Penn & Schoen was overly-optimistic regarding Mejia’s popularity. By Decamps’ estimate, the President would receive just 8% of the vote, as opposed to the 13% accorded him by the pollsters. Decamps said that former President Leonel Fernandez, the current PLD Presidential candidate, reaped the most advantages from Mejia’s government and he hit out at the President, saying: “The PRD has been battered. Hipolito Mejia was a PRSC activist of the agrarian movement: he doesn’t know what the PRD struggle is about. He has wanted to prostitute the temple of the PRD, which is anti-re-election.”
The President’s PPH re-election project director, Siquio Ng de la Rosa, attributed the President’s poor performance in the survey to the current crisis, which he promised would be eased in a matter of days.
Opposition PLD activist Rafael Perez Modesto, whose party was awarded 65% overall support by the poll, said that the survey reflected the public’s rejection of the government’s economic policies, growing poverty and unemployment among the citizens, lack of money and the worsening power crisis, among other things. He predicted a continued increase in his party’s popularity between now and the election, and a related decrease in that of the President.
The PRSC, for their part, were not happy with their result, which showed just 16% for their candidate, Eduardo Estrella. Vice-Presidential candidate Jose Hazim said that according to their calculations their support should be in the 26% – 28% range. Hazim also said that, in contrast to the poll’s findings, he believed there would be a second round, in which the PRSC would back the PLD.
President Hipolito Mejia himself dismissed the poll, saying that the country should wait for election day to find out who the true winner would be. “When is the election?” asked the President. When told the date, he said, “See you then.” PPH activist and Interior & Police Minister Pedro Franco Badia has said that “elections are won in the final 75 days.”