The Dominican Republic is expelling tens of thousands of Haitians this year, despite pleas United Nations to stop them as they flee gang violence iniquity. Dominican President Luis Abinader is going even further by building a border wall between the two countries that share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.
As Dominican voters go to the polls on Sunday for a general election, a crackdown on immigration, along with the fight against corruption and the growth of tourism, have made Mr. Abinader, who is seeking a second term, the favorite indisputable.
The election shows how the Dominican Republic, with one of the best-performing economies in Latin America, stands out from other countries in the region, where many leaders who rose to power during the same period as Mr. Abinader are harassed by dismal approval notes.
Mr. Abinader’s use of controversial restrictions on Haitian migrants also highlights an iron-fisted approach to migration that makes the Dominican Republic an outlier in the region.
“This is certainly not a ‘change’ election like many others have been in Latin America recently,” said Michael Shifter, a senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based research organization.
Credible polls indicate that a solid majority of Dominicans approve of the tenure of Mr. Abinader, 56, a former pro-market executive in the tourism industry.
He has dominated the race against various rivals, including his closest competitor, Leonel Fernández, a three-time former president, and is within striking distance of a first-round victory on Sunday.
A runoff will take place if no candidate obtains more than 50 percent of the votes. Many members of the large Dominican diaspora are eligible to vote in the election, with more than 600,000 eligible voters in the United States and more than 100,000 in Spain.
Much of Mr. Abinader’s support is due to his anti-corruption initiatives. He won his first term in 2020 by pledging to eliminate corruption that has long been ingrained in the political culture of the Dominican Republic, a country of 11.2 million people.
He appointed Miriam Germán, a former Supreme Court justice, as attorney general. She oversaw investigations that ensnared senior officials from the previous administration, including a former attorney general and a former finance minister.
The investigations have largely focused on Mr. Abinader’s opponents, sparking criticism that his own government has been spared. But other measures, such as the passage of an asset confiscation law in 2022, offer hope for lasting change. Confiscation law is considered an important and pioneering tool to disrupt and dismantle criminal enterprises, depriving them of assets acquired through illicit activities.
Rosario Espinal, a Dominican political analyst, said Mr. Abinader could have won re-election simply by focusing on fighting corruption, as he did in 2020, “but not by the margins he wants.”
Instead, Ms. Espinal said, Mr. Abinader embraced nativist immigration policies traditionally pushed by the Dominican far right. “He needed to find a new topic that would resonate,” she said. “He discovered this in migration.”
The exploitation of anti-Haitian sentiment is nothing new in the Dominican Republic.
Rafael Trujillo, the xenophobic dictator who ruled the country from 1930 to 1961, institutionalized a campaign portraying Haitians as racially inferior and, in 1937, ordered the massacre thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian origin.
Almost all other countries in the Americas offer birthright citizenship. But a 2010 constitutional amendment and a 2013 court ruling excluded children born in the Dominican Republic to undocumented migrants from citizenship.
Concretely, this means that around 130,000 descendants of Haitian migrants live in the Dominican Republic. without citizenship although he was born thereaccording to rights groups.
Like Haiti descended into chaos following murder in 2021 of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, Mr. Abinader relied on the anti-immigration measures already enshrined in Dominican law.
He suspended visas for Haitians in 2023, then closed the border with Haiti for nearly a month, dealing an economic blow to its neighbor in a dispute over building a canal in Haiti using water from Haiti. ‘a river shared between the two countries.
“He showed who wears the pants on this issue,” Robert Luna, who works in marketing, said of Mr. Abinader’s migration policy. “He fights for what the fathers of the nation wanted.”
Dominican immigration officials have gone much further, with some being accused of plunder the homes of Haitians and embarking on a campaign to detain and expel Haitian women who were pregnant or who had just given birth.
Pablo Mella, academic director of the Instituto Superior Pedro Francisco Bonó, a Dominican university, called Mr. Abinader’s policies toward Haiti a “public and international disgrace,” particularly the treatment of pregnant Haitian women.
“What happens is what gets votes,” Mr. Mella added. “The candidates compete to see who is the most anti-Haitian of all. »
A large majority of Dominican voters say the upheaval in Haiti is influence how they will vote. And Mr. Abinader is clearly benefiting from these concerns, as nearly 90 percent of voters have expressed support for building a border wall.
Mr. Abinader defended his migration policies, saying they are no different from 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 is necessary to secure our people,” Mr. Abinader said. told BBC in a recent interview. “We’re just enforcing our law.”
Mr. Abinader’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
However, some voters are not convinced by the outgoing president. Tirso Lorenzo Piña, a doorman and evangelical Christian, said he was unhappy with Mr. Abinader’s behavior. support to the United Nations for admitting Palestine as a member.
“Everyone has their own ideology, their concepts, their way of thinking,” Mr. Piña said. “But I don’t like him.”
Yet Mr. Abinader benefits from a divided opposition and broad consensus in the Dominican Republic for investor-friendly policies that have boosted economic growth. His handling of the pandemic also helped, distributing vaccines relatively quickly and allowing the Dominican tourism industry to rebound as other countries required visitors to quarantine.
Tourism is a pillar of the economy, accounting for around 16 percent of gross domestic product. The World Bank waits The Dominican Republic’s economy is expected to grow 5.1 percent this year.
While the Dominican Republic’s economy has grown three times the Latin American average over the past two decades, persistent inequality has exposed Mr. Abinader to criticism. He responded by expanding popular cash transfer programs aimed at the country’s poorest residents.
