Sweet Victory

A new leader emerges

Seventeen years after U.S. troops were sent to the Dominican Republic to prevent what Washington feared might be "another Cuba," the politically volatile Caribbean nation (pop. 5.7 million) last week demonstrated the resilience of its fledgling democracy. Moderate Social Democrat Salvador Jorge Blanco of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (P.R.D.) became the country's fourth freely elected President since the assassination of Dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1961.

The 90-day election campaign was the most hotly contested in the Dominican Republic's turbulent 138-year history. Despite persistent rumors of a right-wing military coup, some 77% of the country's 2.6 million eligible voters waited through intermittent showers for as long as eight hours to cast their ballots.

In the first campaign dominated by television, the infirmities of Jorge Blanco's two principal rivals, Right-Winger Joaquin Balaguer, 75, and Socialist Writer-Politician Juan Bosch, 73, both former Presidents, were all too apparent. Even so, the two combative oldsters won a total of 48.7% of the vote to Jorge Blanco's 46.7%.

A trim, well-dressed lawyer from Santiago, Jorge Blanco, 55, advocates a mix of social liberalism and fiscal conservatism to steady the Dominican Republic's badly faltering economy. Like his predecessor, Antonio Guzman Fernandez, he faces an economy burdened with sharply higher oil costs (from $60 million in 1977 to an estimated $600 million this year) and depressed prices for such export commodities as sugar, gold, coffee and ferronickel. Almost half of the Dominican work force is either unemployed or underemployed.

The new President is certain to push for increased U.S. aid and investment, as well as for greater access to U.S. markets under the aegis of the Reagan Administration's Caribbean Basin development plan. But even with such help, he faces an uphill battle to improve economic prospects in the Dominican Republic.

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