Hipólito Mejía

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Hipólito Mejía

President of Dominican Republic
In office 16 August 2000 – 16 August 2004
Preceded by	Leonel Fernández
Succeeded by	Leonel Fernández

Born	February 22, 1941 Gurabo, Santiago Province
Political party	Dominican Revolutionary Party
Spouse	Rosa Gómez

Rafael Hipólito Mejía Domínguez (born February 22, 1941, in Gurabo, Santiago Province), was President of the Dominican Republic from August 16, 2000 to August 16, 2004.

[edit] Early life

Mejía received an associate degree in Agronomy at the Loyola Polytechnic Institute in San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic, graduating in 1962. Two years later, he attended special programs at North Carolina State University in the United States.

At age twenty-four, he was appointed director and undersecretary of the national Tobacco Institute. In 1978, has was appointed Minister of Agriculture under the government of President Antonio Guzmán Fernández. During this period, agri-business incentive laws were passed and programs to promote rural agriculture development and technification were undertaken.

In 1982, Mejia was defeated in his campaign to become senator from Santiago Province. In 1990, he was named vice-presidential candidate on the ticket of Dominican Revolutionary Party leader José Francisco Peña Gómez.

[edit] Presidency

Running for president as the candidate of the nominally socialst Dominican Revolutionary Party on a program to increase health, education, and social security services through tax hikes, he was elected on May 16, 2000, with 49.9% of the vote. His main opponents, Danilo Medina and former president Joaquín Balaguer, received 24.9% and 24.6%, respectively. A runoff was scheduled between Medina and Mejía, but Medina withdrew, and Mejía took office on 16 August of that year.

During Mejía's term, the economy shrank, poverty increased, and a sharp increase in the external debt was created. Also during this period, small numbers of Dominican troops were sent to Iraq as part of the Coalition of the Willing, though they were later retracted at about the same time as troops from many other Latin American nations were withdrawn.

The aircraft used by Mejia's security team was seized by law enforcement at Miami International Airport. His chief of security, Colonel Pedro "Pepe" Julio Goico, then purchased a helicopter from accused Dominican drug kingpin Quirino Ernesto Paulino Castillo. Paulino had previously been reinstated to the rank of Army Captain by personal order of Mejía. Goico, who also received hundreds of millions of Pesos in the Baninter scandal, later had his US travel visa revoked and is currently being prosecuted for money laundering in the Paulino affair.

Dominican territory was also used to train and arm Haitian paramilitary death squads which overthrew the elected Haitian government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Hipólito Mejía

Most notably, Mejia's term saw the collapse of Baninter, the country's second largest privately held commercial bank, in a US$2.2B banking fraud and government corruption scandal. The corruption was long standing, with previous presidential administrations of various parties having been involved. Though required by law to only guarantee individual deposits of up to $500,000 Dominican Pesos (about US$21,000 at the time of the bank collapse) placed within the country, the Mejía-controlled Dominican Central Bank opted to guarantee all $2.2B in unbacked Baninter deposits, regardless of amount, regardless of whether deposits were in Pesos or United States Dollars and regardless of whether the deposits were held in the Dominican Republic or in Baninter's branches in the Cayman Islands and Panama. The subsequent fiscal shortfall was equal to 12%-15% of GDP, resulting in massive inflation (42%) and the devaluation of the Peso by over 50%.

The Mejía-controlled Central Bank's stated reason for the bailout of Baninter depositors was the avoidance of a crisis in confidence and an overall collapse in the Dominican banking system, and some members of the most powerful and richest Dominican families involved in this scandal were imprisoned. However, the overall effect of the bank bailout was to reimburse the wealthiest of Domincan depositors, some of whom had received rates of interest as high as 27% annually, at the expense of the majority of poor Dominicans -- the latter whom would be required to pay the cost of the bailout through inflation, currency devaluation, government austerity plans and higher taxes over the coming years.

During his term, Mejía attempted to concentrate government resources in thousands of small services scattered around the country instead of the traditional efforts to concentrate on big cities. He established the country's first social security type retirement system, and created a fixed advanced corporate tax of 1.5% to aid in government revenue collection.

Despite a late announced plan to give away tens of thousands of small motorcycles to the electorate were he to be reelected, Mejía was defeated in the presidential elections of May 16, 2004, by former President Leonel Fernández, who campaigned on a platform of stabilising the economy and reducing inflation.