A New Stability

As his country headed into last week's municipal elections, Dominican President Joaquin Balaguer kept conspicuously aloof. He made no campaign speeches and withheld endorsements, ordered other government leaders to do likewise. By seeking to confine the campaign to local issues and personalities, Balaguer hoped to avoid making the election a national plebiscite on his two-year government and thus avert partisan fireworks. Yet, in the end, the election still came down to a vote for or against Balaguer. A heavy turnout of 1,000,000 voters gave his Reformista party and other pro-Balaguer independents an estimated 90% of both the 77 mayoralties and 488 city council posts that were at stake. An even bigger victory for Balaguer--and for his country--was the honesty of the elections and the absence of any widespread violence.

Ambitious Renovation. As a vote of confidence, the election signaled a new stability and optimism in the Dominican Republic. Though still troubled by many of the problems of the underdeveloped, the country has experienced a relaxation of the old political tensions that triggered the 1965 revolution. From the rich rice fields in the north and the green, leafy mountain towns of the west to downtown Santo Domingo, Balaguer has launched an ambitious renovation of the Dominican Republic and its morale, helped along by $45 million in U.S. aid. New warehouses are sprouting up along the capital's Ozama River, replacing those burned down in the bitter fighting three years ago. More than 80% of the capital's buildings and homes have been repainted in gleaming whites, blues, roses and mustard yellows. In the northwestern suburbs, broad fields have given way to block upon block of middle-and upper-class housing.

At the same time, the economy is humming along like the portable cement mixers that are busy all over the country. Agricultural and industrial production is climbing, foreign investment is trickling back into the country, and

Balaguer is even planning a tourist industry along a 25-mile strip of powdery white beach on the eastern end of the island. Appalling poverty and misery still remain, of course; fetid new slums have sprung up north of Santo Domingo, and a yearlong drought in the parched, scabrous southern peninsula has decimated cattle herds.

But Balaguer is moving forcefully--and with little coordinated political opposition to deter him. General Elias Wessin y Wessin, leader of the ultraright, remains in involuntary exile in Miami. Leftist Juan Bosch continues in voluntary exile in Spain. Meantime, their political movements within the country have splintered and all but disintegrated. Pleas by Wessin, Bosch and other opposition leaders for a heavy abstention on voting day were largely unheeded by the electorate.

Believer in Personalismo. A firm believer in personalismo, Balaguer runs a tight, one-man government, dispensing all patronage, settling all arguments and making all decisions, even down to personally granting and signing every visa. When he needed money for a pet hydroelectric project in the north, Balaguer not only arranged personally for $30 million in U.S. aid, but organized telethons in Santo Domingo and Santiago that raised another $385,000 from Dominicans themselves. A onetime functionary of Dictator Rafael Trujillo, Balaguer stops short of being a dictator himself. He not only lacks a dictator's broad powers but believes far more fervently in democracy and the future of his country than in power for power's sake. Last week, on the eve of the municipal elections, Balaguer even referred to his regime as nothing more than a "transitional government." In the Dominican Republic, however, any transition for the better must be considered a major accomplishment.

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