Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies
tion in 1970 and 1974; nearly all of the opposition ultimately
refrained from participating. Balaguer also consistently
retained the support of the conservative Roman Catholic hierarchy
within the country. The PR was Balaguer's personal
machine, largely ignored when he was in office, except at election
time. As such, it lacked a clear-cut program or coherent
ideology, although Balaguer continued to reiterate themes of
order, nationalism, religiosity, and anti-Haitianism.
In 1986 Balaguer supported the merging of his party with
existing minor Christian Democratic parties, opening the way
for the integration of his newly named PRSC (the former PR
party) into the Christian Democratic Union. As with the much
longer lasting and more deeply rooted link between the PRD
and the Socialist International, this association brought the
PRSC international visibility, financial and technical assistance,
and the promise, never realized, of an ideological basis for the
party. Although the merger did assist Balaguer in his electoral
comeback that year, from 1978 to 1994, electoral support for
the PR (or PRSC since 1986) oscillated fairly narrowly between
around 35 percent and 42 percent of the vote. The party won
elections for the most part because of divisions in the opposition
and some use of fraud.
Throughout his political career, Balaguer has consistently
retained absolute control over the PRSC, forcing out or weakening
potential adversaries within the party. In 1996, when he
was constitutionally barred from running for the presidency
again, he refused to campaign for or ultimately vote for his own
party's candidate in the first round of the presidential ballot;
instead, he first quietly supported Leonel Fernandez of the
PLD, and then openly endorsed him for the second-round ballot.
In 1996 support for the party dropped precipitously to only
15 percent in the first-round presidential election, and it has
remained at that low level. Although Balaguer turned ninetytwo
in 1999, he retains control of the PRSC. There are serious
questions about the future of the party once Balaguer dies.
Another major party is the PRD, which was founded in 1939
by exiles from the Trujillo dictatorship, including Juan Bosch.
It functioned as an exile organization for twenty-two years
before returning to the Dominican Republic in 1961 after
Trujillo's assassination. The PRD was able to win an impressive
victory in the 1962 elections, through extensive organizational
work and a campaign that focused on helping the poor. This
electoral victory led to the ephemeral government of Juan
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