LYNN — Ramfis Dominguez-Trujillo, well-known for being the grandson of a brutal Dominican Republic dictator, is vying to become president of the same country. But in direct contrast to his grandfather’s legacy, he says his intention is to make the country more democratic.

Dominguez-Trujillo, 47, stopped by Lynn on Sunday to speak to The Item about his 2020 presidential campaign, laying out his political platform — he talked about how to combat two of the biggest issues he sees facing the Dominican Republic, which are government corruption and national debt.

The Dominican Republic is a representative democracy, whose current president is Danilo Medina. Dominican citizens residing abroad are able to vote in the Dominican Republic’s presidential election, according to online reports.

Dominguez-Trujillo is the grandson of Rafael Trujillo, who ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961. The dictator is credited for his success in reducing foreign debt and fostering greater economic prosperity for the Dominican people. But his rule also included the murder of thousands of civilians and his order for the massacre of 20,000 Haitians.

Dominguez-Trujillo said his grandfather was essentially a “product of his time,” coming into power after a 60-year period of political instability in the Dominican Republic. He said his grandfather ruled when there were several other totalitarian governments or dictatorships in Latin America, including Colombia, Venezuela and Nicaragua. At the time, he said dictatorships were supported by the U.S. government.

“I’m a product of my surroundings as well,” Dominguez-Trujillo said. “I’m a product of the United States because I was born and raised here. So, I don’t know what dictatorships look like and I’ve never met my grandfather either. I was born nine years after the fall of his regime and I have never, nor will I ever support the negative aspects of his government.”

Dominguez-Trujillo was born in New York to Dominican parents and grew up in Miami. He said a huge frustration he had growing up was that he was unable to travel to the Dominican Republic because of prohibition placed on his family — the travel restriction was finally lifted after his uncle became the country’s president in 2000.

After he was able to travel to the Dominican Republic, Dominguez-Trujillo said he fell in love with the people and the country. He said he aims to make the country’s government a democracy, based on the model in the United States.

“We really want to take democracy back to the Dominican Republic (and) copy the system here in the United States, ” he said. “Right now, we have a centralization that works to the detriment of the people and the political system. We want to make sure the power is back in the hands of the people.”

Today, he said the Dominican Republic is a “democratic dictatorship,” which he sees as a corrupt system that doesn’t allow for the manifestation of a true democracy. He said his campaign has founded its own political party, the Democratic Party of Hope, a political project that he said was launched last week.

Dominguez-Trujillo said his party is not recognized by the Junta Central Electoral, the national organization that has to approve all of the country’s political parties, so he’ll be running under another recognized party for the time being.

A major problem Dominguez-Trujillo sees in the Dominican Republic is corruption. He said politicians buy people’s votes and many political parties exist to serve the government, exchanging money for political power.

Dominguez-Trujillo said he would separate the country’s three powers, the executive, legislative and judicial and give full autonomy to the judicial power so they can arrest government officials who have stolen money from the government.

Another plan, as he believes there isn’t “a single decent politician in the Dominican Republic,” would be to hire Dominicans from the diaspora, who have been educated in the United States, for government positions. His plan would also be to have a cabinet of 50 percent women, who he said are less likely to engage in corruption.

Another huge problem, he said, is the country’s indebtedness. He said the country needs to get back to its agricultural roots, which should be the driving force of the economy.

Some citizens living in the Dominican Republic may consider the presidential candidate a foreigner, but he said he knows the country better than any other politician, as he’s spent the last seven or eight years traveling “every single nook and cranny” of it.

“The reason that I’m so committed to this project is that when you read stories, you see newscasts, you see videos of the difficulties … the Dominican people are going through, it’s one thing. But when you live it, when you actually go into the countryside and you see little kids walking around barefoot and you see the difficulties that they have to overcome in order to get to school and receive a very poor level of education, you see the hunger and you see the strife and you see the misery, there is absolutely nothing that will change my mind and steer me away from this project because we are going to change the political landscape,” Dominguez-Trujillo said.

“It’s something that moves me very much because when you see the kinds of things that I’ve seen, you can’t turn your back on it.”

For some Dominicans, like Ruben Holguin, 30, of Lynn, the wounds from his grandfather’s dictatorship are still fresh. He said the country has made a lot of progress under its current president.

“Ramfis is a clown,” Holguin said. “He has a project (no political party). He downplays the fact that his grandfather was a dictator who killed thousands of people. The Dominican Republic is not ready for another Trujillo in our country … It’s a wound that’s still healing.”

But Juan Carlos, 42, of Lynn, is a supporter of the candidate.

“We really need a change for the Dominican Republic,” he said. “For the last 22 years, the past presidents haven’t done anything for the Dominican people. So, this guy, we like the future he promised for all Dominican people in the Dominican Republic and for the rest who live out of the Dominican Republic too.”