Reprinted from Caribbean Net News
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Dominican Republic opposition picks presidential candidate

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

by: Manuel Jimenez

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (Reuters): The Dominican Republic's main opposition party has selected a former public works minister as its candidate for the May 2008 presidential election, a party official said.

Miguel Vargas Maldonado, 56, was ahead by just over 80 percent in a nationwide primary held on Sunday with 30 percent of ballots counted, said Ramon Alburquerque, president of the left-of-center Party of the Dominican Revolution (PRD).

Former Dominican Vice President Milagros Ortiz Bosch had almost 18 percent of the vote, Alburquerque said. Ortiz Bosch quickly conceded defeat.

Vargas Maldonado served as public works minister during the 2000-2004 presidency of Hipolito Mejia.

Mejia's rule was marked by a severe economic crisis caused by the collapse, prompted by fraud, of a major bank.

A botched banking sector rescue operation launched by the Mejia government almost brought the Caribbean country to the brink of defaulting on its international bonds as it ran out of money, and sent inflation and unemployment soaring.

The economy of the country, which shares the island of Hispaniola with impoverished Haiti, has recovered strongly under President Leonel Fernandez, who cut government expenditure, restructured international debt and secured a standby loan from the International Monetary Fund.

Fernandez's centrist Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) trounced the PRD in legislative elections last May. The PLD will pick its presidential candidate on May 6, and speculation is rife that Fernandez would like to seek re-election.

The PRD was established in 1939 in Havana, Cuba, by a group of exiled politicians opposed to the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. In 1973 the party split and some of its leaders formed the PLD.

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