There is a lot of optimism in the country that the present electoral campaign will not interrupt the normal activities of the populace. The parties are all vowing to hold “clean wars,” bringing new levels to Dominican democracy.
Partido Revolucionario Dominicano and allies: The secretary general of the PRD emphasizes that party will maintain its “people first” slogan, and continue to sell the best values of Dominicans and focus on the hopes, and the basic needs of society. Their strategy is to bring across a positive message with solutions to the principal national problems and not fall prey to provocation or dirty campaign tactics. “We do not want to make people who are already bitter, more bitter,” says Hatuey de Camps, director of the PRD’s campaign.
Partido de la Liberación Dominicana: The head of the campaign for the PLD, Danilo Medina, says that the intense activity demonstrated by his presidential candidate, Leonel Fernández, will be honed in a scientific way as results of opinion polls come in. Scientific research is helping them to decide on who will be their vice presidential candidate.
Danilo Medina adds they will focus on the weaknesses of the parties. He says they are aware that Leonel is the candidate of the moment, in tune with the present times and he feels that it will be very difficult for someone to position themselves above him.
The slogan of the party whose color is purple is “The new road,” and its campaigning is mainly directed to two specific segments of the population: women and youth. One of their most commented upon television advertisements features Leonel dunking a basketball. It is noteworthy that it plays on the weaknesses of Peña Gómez (perceived as recovering from a life-threatening disease) and Jacinto Peynado (very much overweight).
Partido Reformista Social Cristiano: The electoral campaign of Jacinto Peynado is oriented to stressing the value of the new infrastructure completed during the Joaquin Balaguer administrations and the capacity of Jacinto Peynado to exploit these works for the benefit of the people. His campaign is directed by Federico Antún Batlle who also says they are using marketing studies to determine the contents of the campaign speeches of the PRSC candidate. They are emphasizing these speeches contain proposals to solve the nation’s ills, simultaneously stressing the proven work and problem solving capacity of Jacinto Peynado.