Leonel Antonio Fernández Reyna (born 26 December 1953) is a Dominican lawyer, academic, and has been President of the Dominican Republic since 2004; his term expires in 2012. He held the same office from 1996 to 2000.
Fernández became the first elected president of the Dominican Republic under his political party, the Dominican Liberation Party ("Partido de la Liberación Dominicana" in Spanish), although party founder Juan Bosch was also sworn in as president in 1963 after the first democratic elections held in roughly four decades in the country. Fernández's administrations have focused much on technological and infrastructural development and macroeconomic and monetary stability (no hyperinflationary crisis has occurred under Fernández and PLD administrations).
He is a native of Villa Juana, Distrito Nacional and lived for much of his childhood and early adulthood in New York City.
Early Life
Fernandez is the son of José Antonio Fernández Collado and Yolanda Reyna Romero. His family moved to the United States and he spent most of his childhood and teenage years in living in New York City in the Washington Heights neighborhood, well known for being densely populated by Dominican-ancestry residents.
After he finished High School, he returned to his country and started Law Studies in the Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo. In the meanwhile, he joined the Dominican Liberation Party upon at its inception in 1973, when former Dominican President Juan Bosch left the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) to create the new party. Fernández was known as a close pupil of Bosch and was presented as a vice-presidential candidate with the latter during the 1994 presidential election.
From : www.wikipedia.org
