President Luis Abinader of the Dominican Republic won his re-election bid by a landslide, supported by broad restrictions on Haitian migrants and a strong economy.
Abinader, 56, who came to power four years ago promising to fight corruption, won 57% of the vote on Sunday, easily enough to avoid a runoff with his closest rival, Leonel Fernández, a three-time former president. According to the National Electoral Authority of the Dominican Republic, Fernández took 29%, with 100% of the seats counted.
The official results were made available on Tuesday evening, although Abinader's main rivals had already conceded goals on Sunday evening. Abinader, a former tourism industry executive, figured prominently in the vote as opponents coalesced in a bid to unseat one of Latin America's most popular leaders.
In a victory speech, Abinader thanked his rivals and those who voted for him.
“I accept the trust placed in me,” Mr. Abinader said. “I won't let you down.”
Abinader's immigration policies have loomed over the election, highlighting how a crackdown on migrants could prove exceptionally popular. The Dominican Republic, which shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with Haiti, is stepping up deportations of tens of thousands of Haitians this year.
While armed gangs create unrest in Haiti, Abinader is also carrying out the construction of a border wall between the two countries. In a country where exploiting anti-Haitian sentiment is nothing new and where the Haiti crisis has sown fears of contagion, many voters have applauded such initiatives.
“He showed who has responsibility on this issue,” Robert Luna, a Santo Domingo voter who works in marketing, said of Abinader's immigration policies. “He is fighting for what the fathers of the nation wanted.”
Abinader's first-round victory also demonstrated how the Dominican Republic, one of Latin America's fastest-growing economies, stands out from other countries in the region, where many leaders who came to power around the same time as Abinader are stubborn about sad approval judgments.
Much of Abinader's support also comes from his anti-corruption initiatives. He won his first term in 2020 by promising to eliminate the corruption that has long been entrenched in the political culture of the Dominican Republic, a country of 11.2 million people.
He appointed Miriam Germán, a former Supreme Court judge, as attorney general. She oversaw investigations that were handled by high-ranking officials from the previous administration, including a former attorney general and a former finance minister.
The investigations have largely focused on people opposed to Abinader, prompting criticism that his own government was spared. But other moves, such as the 2022 passage of an asset forfeiture law, offer hope for lasting change. Confiscation law is seen as an important and pioneering tool to disrupt and dismantle criminal enterprises, depriving them of illegally acquired assets.
Rosario Espinal, a Dominican political analyst, said Abinader could have won re-election simply by focusing on the battle against corruption, as he did in 2020, “but not by the margins he wants.”
Instead, Espinal said, Abinader has embraced the nativist immigration policies traditionally promoted by the Dominican far right. “He needed to find a new topic that would resonate,” she said. “He discovered it during the migration.”
In doing so, Mr. Abinader has drawn on a long tradition. Rafael Trujillo, the xenophobic dictator who ruled the country from 1930 to 1961, institutionalized a campaign that painted Haitians as racially inferior and, in 1937, ordered the massacre of thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian origin.
Nearly all other countries in the Americas offer birthright citizenship. But a 2010 constitutional amendment and a 2013 court ruling barred children of undocumented migrants born in the Dominican Republic from citizenship.
In practical terms, this means that around 130,000 descendants of Haitian migrants live in the Dominican Republic without citizenship despite being born there, according to rights groups.
As Haiti descended into chaos following the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, Abinader relied on anti-immigration measures already enshrined in Dominican law.
It suspended visas for Haitians in 2023 and then closed the border with Haiti for nearly a month, in a dispute over the construction of a canal in Haiti using water from a river shared between the two countries.
Dominican immigration officials went above and beyond, and some have been accused of plunder the homes of Haitians and waging a campaign to detain and deport Haitian women who were pregnant or who had just given birth.
Pablo Mella, academic director of the Pedro Francisco Bonó Institute at Dominican University, called Abinader's policies toward Haiti a “public and international disgrace,” particularly his treatment of pregnant Haitian women.
Before the election, a large majority of Dominican voters said the upheaval in Haiti was underway influencing how they would vote. And Abinader clearly benefited from those concerns, with nearly 90% of voters expressing support for his construction of a border wall.
Many in the large Dominican diaspora were able to vote in the election, with more than 600,000 eligible voters residing in the United States and more than 100,000 in Spain.
Abinader defended his immigration policies, saying they are no different than what countries like Jamaica, the Bahamas, the United States and Canada have done to limit the arrival of Haitians fleeing the crisis.
“I must do whatever it takes to protect our people,” Abinader said he told the BBC in a recent interview. “We are simply enforcing our law.”
Mr. Abinader's office did not respond to requests for comment.
Additionally, Abinader benefited from a divided opposition and broad consensus in the Dominican Republic in favor of investor-friendly policies that spurred economic growth. His handling of the coronavirus pandemic has also helped, with the relatively quick distribution of vaccines allowing the Dominican tourism industry to recover while some other countries required visitors to enter quarantine.
Tourism is a pillar of the economy and represents approximately 16% of the gross domestic product. The World Bank to expect The Dominican Republic's economy will grow 5.1% this year.
While the country's economy has expanded over the past two decades at a rate three times the Latin American average, persistent inequality has exposed Abinader to criticism. She responded by expanding popular cash transfer programs for the country's poorest residents.
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