How many polls are required for a candidate to project a consistent winning image? Which of them tells you his real position in public appreciation? Why, if so many pollsters coincide in tipping the scales in favor of one, does the distorting propaganda campaign not cease, highlighting and out of context expressions of the other, many of them certainly misguided in the circumstances of a harsh campaign, in which the value of the money exceeds that of the proposals?
In my six decades of journalistic practice I have witnessed a lot of aggressiveness in political campaigns, and how the verbal violence that this confrontation generates took over the electoral field, to open up space for lies and manipulation. I have seen how the art of storytelling and the actions of candidate circles have been resorted to, hatching plans to discredit adversaries and sometimes even foreign governments, by resorting to illegal recordings. And I have witnessed the use of large amounts of public resources at the service of candidacies, with the full support of a beneficiary, perhaps also a victim of this illegal practice in the past.
On the third Sunday of May 2024, we Dominicans will return to the polls to elect the binomial that will lead the nation for the next four years. In a democracy of values, with strong institutions, citizens exercise this right fully and with full awareness, without more pressure than that dictated by their own vision of reality. The distortion of that reality, through surveys and media acquisitions, has the purpose of changing the environment that one observes in the streets.
Although the use of power does not always change people’s intentions, everything tends to portend that money and power will continue to perpetuate this singular tradition of Dominican politics.
The entrance Perpetual “democratic practices” was first published in The Caribbean Newspaper.
