Dominican centre-right President Leonel Fernandez has won re-election, results showed Saturday, as his chief rival conceded defeat, DPA reported. With more than 80 per cent of ballots counted from Friday's vote, he had 53.2 per cent of the vote, which would be enough to avoid a run-off election. Social democrat Miguel Vargas was at about 41 per cent. With the results going in Fernandez's favour, Vargas declared his acceptance of the outcome "as a democrat" and conceded defeat. The remaining votes were divided between five other candidates. An attorney by profession, the 54-year-old Fernandez was elected in 2004 and served an earlier presidential term from 1996-2000. In the four years of his latest term, the Dominican economy grow at a yearly 9 per cent. With 5.7 million citizens eligible to vote, calm reigned during Friday's voting with 270 election observers posted across the Spanish-speaking country, which occupies the eastern half of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, shared with French-speaking Haiti. On election day, a team of observers from the Organization of American States found that some of the Dominican's 13,000 polling stations were late in opening Friday morning, due to logistical problems. There were also scattered complaints of attempts to buy identity documents on election day.
