Elections in the Dominican Republic: who is Luis Abinader, the first president elected in times of pandemic in Latin America

Luis Abinader, the candidate of the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM) in Sunday’s elections in the Dominican Republic, will be the next president of the Caribbean country.

According to data from the Dominican Central Electoral Board, with nearly 40% of the votes counted, Abinader had reached almost 53% of the votes, which led his main opponents to recognize his victory.

With the result, Abinader – who had been second in the 2016 elections – will become the first Dominican head of state born after the end of the dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo.

But he is also the first Latin American president elected in times of the covid-19 pandemic and – symptomatically for these times – the first president in the region to take office after becoming ill with coronavirus.

Among the main proposals that marked his campaign are the creation of more than 600,000 jobs, empower Dominican women, reverse informality in the labor sector and create an agency to reduce public transport spending and traffic in cities.

With its victory, a long 16-year cycle is closed in which the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) held the reins of power, a period during which the Caribbean nation became the country that has grown the most in the last five years in Latin America.

However, as Dominican political scientist Olaya Dotel, a professor at the University of Santo Domingo, explains to BBC Mundo, several factors -including recent corruption and impunity scandals- caused a political satiety that materialized this Sunday with the departure of the government’s PLD.

Now, Abinader will have the task not only of trying to continue the economic progress that the outgoing government started, but of reforming the country and fulfilling its campaign promises in an unusual context: recovery once the coronavirus pandemic ends.

“Everything would be easier if there were simply the problems left by this government, of institutionality, of corruption, of weakened justice … but unfortunately I am afraid that they will be overshadowed by those brought by the pandemic,” Dominican political scientist Rosario Espinal tells BBC Mundo , a professor at Temple University.

But who is this businessman who has never held a position in the government and who now reaches the most important political position in the country with a party of just six years?