Eight months ago and before a crowd they melted into a kiss to show their union, both emotionally and politically; now, the former Dominican president Leonel Fernández and his wife, the country’s vice president, Margarita Cedeño, married since 2003, will face each other at the polls next Sunday.
Fernández, 66, once again aspires to the Presidency of the Republic, and Cedeño, 55, seeks to revalidate the position he has held since 2012, now as a ballot partner of the ruling candidate, Gonzalo Castillo, bitter rival of her husband.
Amid speculation and conjecture, Leonel and Margarita, who have not been seen together in public since last October, assure that they are still married, but that politics has led them down different paths.
THE BREAK
Margarita Cedeño was eight years as first lady, a position from which she became, thanks to the millionaire social assistance programs she managed, the most popular figure in the Fernández Government.
In the last eight years, he has continued to be in charge of these programs, but since the Vice Presidency of the Republic, during the two consecutive governments of Danilo Medina, Fernández’s former ally and now a declared enemy of Fernández.
Cedeño, who has flirted several times with the presidential candidacy of the ruling party, decided to support the former president in the primaries of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) held last October.
They backed him up with a public kiss on the mouth on October 4, at the closing rally of Fernández’s campaign for the primaries, in which he was defeated by Gonzalo Castillo, his now rival at the polls.
Fernández, unbeaten politically up to that moment, did not accept defeat in the primaries, assured that there was fraud against him and accused the government headed by Danilo Medina since 2012.
After Fernández’s defeat and the PLD division being sealed, Cedeño said that his position, which is voted alongside that of the president, was “not under discussion.”
At the same time, he pointed out that his situation “so particular and unique in the history of national politics, and perhaps in the entire region,” required in-depth reflection on his political future.
THE “WEDDING” WITH THE RIVAL
On February 24, surprising more than one, the PLD candidate announced Cedeño as his running mate, in an attempt to try to capitalize on the former first lady’s great popularity.
“It does not take away the dream that some people mistakenly judge me for staying in my party,” Cedeño said that day in his speech to the PLD militants, after being presented by Castillo, whom the polls rank second after the Party candidate. Modern Revolutionary (PRM), Luis Abinader.
A RELATION TO THE SHADOW OF ELECTIONS
The now political rivals, who have a 16-year-old daughter, have not shown themselves in public since that kiss, and when she has been asked about the relationship, she ensures that they continue together and love each other.
These days, in an interview on a popular program that is broadcast on the internet, he hummed a song by the Colombian J. Balvin to describe his relationship with Fernández: “We fight, we fix ourselves, we stay in that one, but we love … and here we go”.
He, a little more sparing when talking about the subject, recalled a comment by former Colombian President Belisario Betancourt, who once said that he was so democratic that he slept with the opposition every day, referring to political rivals who claimed that he did not conquer the vote neither of the wife.
“Today women demand independence and make decisions. That must be respected,” Fernández remarked, further clarifying that their decision “does not respond to any” political strategy.
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