Fernandez Wins Dominican Rep. Election

17/05/2004| IslamWeb

Former President Leonel Fernandez won a presidential election in the Dominican Republic after voters punished incumbent Hipolito Mejia for an economic slump in the Caribbean country. Mejia conceded defeat to his rival late Sunday, saying his center-left Dominican Revolutionary Party estimated Fernandez was set to win about 54 percent of the vote, to his own 36 percent. "I concede victory to the Dominican Liberation Party," Mejia told reporters, speaking as early results trickled in. "I congratulate President Leonel Fernandez." Fernandez, a 50-year-old lawyer and academic who was in office from 1996 to 2000, needed to garner at least 50 percent of the votes to win the election outright and avoid a run-off vote on June 30 in the country of 8.5 million people. Opinion polls had predicted a Fernandez victory and showed Mejia, 63, faced a backlash over soaring prices and job losses. The election was marred by violence in which three people were killed and there were scattered reports of voting irregularities, but international observers said the election had largely been fair. The campaign focused on the economic crisis, triggered by the collapse a year ago of one of the country's largest private banks with losses of more than 2 billion dollar that tore a hole in the public coffers. Fernandez had presided over annual growth of more than 7 percent, making the Dominican Republic one of Latin America's success stories. Heavily dependent on imports, the country has seen its peso dive to a third of the value it had against the U.S. dollar in 2000, inflation rose to more than 40 percent and many small businesses collapsed. It secured a 600 million US dollar International Monetary Fund loan last year to tide it through the crisis. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Dominican President Hipolito Mejia conceded defeat in the country's presidential election, paving the way for former president Leonel Fernandez, pictured here casting his vote, to return to the nation's highest office. (AFP)