From among their number the municipal councilmen select a president who is regarded as mayor of the commune, though many of the duties elsewhere pertaining to mayors are discharged by an official called the syndic. The councilmen are supposed to be elected for a term of two years, but the oft repeated revolutions have interfered as seriously with their terms of office as with everything else. The average Dominican seems to manifest little interest in his municipal elections; my question as to when the last local election was held would generally be answered with uncertainty: "Last January, no, last April, no, I believe it was in November." After all, the elections have usually been mere ratifications of slates prepared beforehand. In the time of Heureaux the lists of new councilmen were often arranged in the capital and a few days before election remitted to the various towns, even with a designation of the person whom the council was later to choose as its president. The results of such a method of selection of councilmen has not been as unfavorable as might be expected. The position of councilman pays no salary and is not of sufficient importance to appeal to the politician, so that under the present system the principal merchants and other prominent men are frequently designated. The law does not prohibit foreigners from forming part of the municipal councils and they have frequently been chosen, especially in Puerto Plata. CHAPTER XIX POLITICS AND REVOLUTIONS Political parties.--Elections.--Relation between politics and revolutions.--Conduct of revolutions.--Casualties.--Number of revolutions.--Effect of revolutions. The characteristic features of Dominican politics are the violence of political antagonism and the absence of differences of principle between the political parties. None of the three parties existing to-day has a platform, and the distinction between them is entirely a matter of the personality of the leaders. Each party alleges that it has the best people and the purest motives and views with alarm the government of the country by any other party. In practice therefore, politics follows the rule only too common in the Spanish-American countries, of resolving itself into a personal struggle between the "ins" and the "outs."