Post election tensions

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC - In Brief 19 May 2016 by Pavel Isa

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Four days after national elections, the country is living in tension because the final tally for Congress and municipal authorities haven’t been finished. Negligence and serious organizational problems in a complex by nature process have become apparent and have caused serious delays and tensions at the local level as those who feel they are being deprived of their right to participate in a fair and democratic process have advanced their claims. This is unprecedented in recent history in the country. Since 1996 elections in the Dominican Republic have been well organized and mostly free of serious conflicts. The outcome of the elections at the national level, where the President Medina was reelected Medina, is unquestionable. But serious challenges to the impartiality of local and national electoral authorities and the quality of the organization are making last Sunday’s elections to lose legitimacy. In about a quarter of the polling stations, scanners that count votes electronically were not available. In a similar proportion the equipment that captures fingerprints did not arrive. In addition, technical support staff for the voting process seems to have experienced serious problems for their accreditation and readiness, there were frequent complaints of undue involvement of party delegates and staffs of polling stations in the voting process, and in an unknown number of polling stations, preferential votes for members of Congress were not accounted for. But what most delayed the process is that the official count is the result from a manual rather than electronic process. Opposition political parties and other actors were successful in demanding a reverse of the init...