Prominent pollster calls opposition party’s candidate “regrettable”

Santo Domingo.- Prominent historian and writer Bernardo Vega Thursday called “regrettable” that the opposition PRD parity didn’t select “a better” candidate than Hipólito Mejía, who in his view drags the weight of his Administration.

The also economist doubted Mejia’s possibilities of returning to office, affirming that he left the Presidency in 2004 with a low popularity. “I believe that people are choosing between the lesser of two evils among the candidates. Then there’s an a 12 year-old Administration which is going to be weakening. Now, it’s a shame that the PRD didn’t come out with a person better who’s a candidate than Hipólito Mejía, who drags his four years in office. That’s to say that they’re the same two candidates as 10 years ago, exactly.”

Quoted by newspaper Caribe, the representative of the pollster Penn & Schoen said ruling PLD party candidate Danilo Medina has a “slight advantage” over his opponent, but noted that “these scandals of the last few days, in the measure that solid information on corruption in Leonel Fernandez’s Administration surface, could increase the votes in favor of Hipólito, because it’s difficult for Danilo Medina to distance himself from those acts of corruption.”

As to the Justice Ministry’s investigation into the alleged “cracking” of emails of the first lady Margarita, Cedeño, and other national personalities, the Dominican ambassador in Washington from 1996 to 2000 said “It’s obvious that the hackers are part of a PRD campaign to seek out information on Government corruption, and the Government, by reacting so strongly to this with so much theatrics, with so many helicopters and people and all that, is harming itself, because people focus themselves on that information.”