Adriano Miguel Tejada, the executive editor of Diario Libre newspaper, is giving out free advice to the presidential candidates for 2020.
Regarding the presidential candidate for the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), Gonzalo Castillo, Tejada observes that the nickname of “el penco” is a campaign mistake. It was President Danilo Medina who popularized the unfortunate nickname that has opposite meanings in Dominican vernacular talk (a robust horse) and in Real Academia de la Lengua Spanish (weak horse). Tejada remarks he cannot understand why the term continues to be used.
Regarding Leonel Fernández, Tejada recommends that the former President should instead focus on the municipal election and the possible alliances.
He says the ruling PLD is drifting. That they are not striving to attract the undecided within the party and this reduces the party’s chances, he writes. He observes that the party’s Political Committee is “full of generals who forgot how to fight in the war does not help.”
He also has advice for Luis Abinader, the presidential candidate for the leading opposition party, the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM). He criticizes “Abinader’s triumphalism” saying he is being badly advised. “Luis has every chance of winning at this juncture, but he has to work harder and adapt his language to the people making concrete proposals that are not just “more of the same”. The selection of municipal candidates will be decisive in the party’s electoral positioning towards the presidential elections,” he writes.
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Diario Libre
12 November 2019