Spanish
In this tropical country, where even silences sweat politics, the Central Electoral Board has just discovered a wonderful medicine: banning polls to cure electoral anxiety. The fever isn't lowered, the thermometer is kept in a locked drawer and the patient is declared democratically stable.
The JCE says it seeks equity, transparency, and order. Beautiful words. So beautiful that one almost doesn't see the administrative club hidden behind the vase: suspension of pollsters, loss of registration, prohibition of publishing measurements outside of pre-campaign and campaign, and even a gag order for internal party polls. All very technical, very legal, very institutional; like those dark suits used to bury uncomfortable conversations.
Danilo Medina called it suspicious. Charlie Mariotti went further: he insinuated that if the polls favored the PRM, no one would be so worried about regulating national curiosity. On the other hand, the ruling party speaks of institutionalism with that solemnity of those who defend the just order when the order suits them. And from the Fuerza del Pueblo, some delegates bless the measure saying that the polls influence the electorate. What a belated discovery: polls influence, speeches influence, announcements influence, inaugurations with blue ribbon influence, hugs in neighborhoods influence and even blackouts influence. But, curiously, only the published number seems to need a muzzle.
Dominican politics has a curious relationship with the truth: it invites her to dinner when she is useful, and changes the lock when she arrives unannounced. Polls, certainly, can be used as propaganda, as cheap perfume for sweaty candidates or as a fairground mirror to sell inevitabilities. But between regulating and prohibiting there is a huge distance; the same distance between putting up traffic lights and closing the avenue.
The serious issue isn't that the Board wants to regulate the survey market. That would be reasonable. The serious issue is that in a country where the campaign never sleeps, where politicians engage in "social activities" with more cameras than a reality show, the intention is to punish precisely the publication of measurements. Here, campaigning can be done disguised as a community gathering, a proclamation dressed as a lunch, and personal promotion with the scent of accountability; but be careful about saying how much the scoreboard indicates.
The opposition shouts because it suspects that its microphone is being turned off just when it thinks it has something to sing. The Government responds indignantly, like an offended institutional maiden. And the Board, in the center, tries to convince us that it is not involved in politics while regulating one of the most political tools of politics. In the end, the problem isn't the polls. The problem is the fear of the portrait. Because when power feels beautiful, it orders posters to be printed; when it feels ugly, it prohibits mirrors.
