Las elecciones estan terminadas…. Finalmente!

Yesterday (May 16th, a Sunday) was election day in the Dominican Republic.  For the past few months, we have been inundated with music, posters and parades touting one person/party or another.  And after today, hopefully… peace and quiet.

There are three main parties in the DR: the white party, the purple party, and the red party, with a few other people running for the green party.  The white and purple parties are enemies, and the red party is friends with everyone.

Elections around here were for Senador, Diputada (like a House Representative), Sindico (mayor), and Regidor (city council, I think).  They occur once every 4-6 years, depending on the position.  The president was elected two years ago to a four year term, so we have Leonel in for the next few years if not longer.

The main election we heard about in Montellano was for Sinidco.  Chino Rojas (purple party) vs Omar Sanchez (White party).  In the US, you might get a flyer, see a TV commercial, or get a phone call from the candidate.  Here, it’s all word of mouth.  The candidates remake popular songs to have their jingle in them, and then cars that are full of speakers drive around blasting the same song over and over and over, for weeks on end.  I think everyone in this country will probably be deaf by the age of 40 simply due to the music.   The driving by with the music started at 730 am and ended daily around 11.  The truck below is filled with speakers.

Omar Sanchez’s jingle was “Hay viene Omar, Hay viene Omar, Hay viene Omar Hay viene Omar.”  (Basically Omar is coming).  It is kinda hard to pick out the lyrics though, and for the longest time all I heard was “I give you pan.” (pan=bread)  I knew this wasn’t right, but I still have to work hard to hear the correct lyrics.  You can hear the jingle in the following video  of a parade going by our apartment.

Chino Rojas had a jingle that I believe went “Va a votar por Chino.” (Rough translation: you are going to vote for Chino.)  Or maybe it was “Va a venir con Chino” (I’m going to arrive with Chino).  And another one that just said “Chino” over and over during the song.  Chino recently paved the road into Los Ciruelos where the Makarios house is, hoping to buy votes.

We had the single cars going around blasting their music, but for the past few weeks, we have had parades.  People bust out their white shirts and flags, or purple shirts and flags, pile into whatever moving vehicle they can find and then go down the road, be it highway or through the streets of town, at about 5 mph.   My favorite parade we passed was on the way home from Sosua one day, when the purple party had probably 5 miles worth of people lined up in this parade, going frightfully slow.  We were on our moto and were thus able to scoot around the side of the parade.  You’ll also see red party cars, since they just want to get out and have fun.

However, my favorite “float” that we saw in these parades was in the white party parade last Friday.  The parade came down our street for 15 minutes, during which you cannot hear yourself think or talk over the car horns and music playing from the cars.  Toward the end came… a decorated Caterpillar front end loader, with people hanging off all over.  Awesome.  Cat, if you need a new idea to pitch for selling more heavy moving equipment, just show them this picture.

Yesterday was election day, and today was hopefully the final day of parades, celebrating Omar (white party) winning his bid for Sindico, and Francis Vargas (purple) winning for Senador. A grand total of 3,300 votes were cast in the Montellano area… I wonder what the vote to money spent ratio ended up as.  I’ve been told that it doesn’t matter who wins, no one will do anything for the community.  We’ll see.  I just would like someone to use that front end loader to knock down the big piles of rocks on the side road to the Mak house….  Chino didn’t quite finish it.