The selection of Leonel Fernández’s running mate has been a most difficult task for the Partido de la Liberación Dominicana and it is leaving the choice until the last minute. It was said that Dr Fernández was asked to choose three candidates and that the party would decide upon the one to be finally selected.
The press has reported on the internal conflict caused by Leonel Fernández’s choice, an outsider who apparently does not have the go-ahead of the party, and the party’s preferred candidates – which hail from within the PLD. The party is officially saying that there are no problems, just an exercise of democracy.
The final choice of vice presidential candidate was to be announced last week, but the party postponed the decision, using the funeral of Jacobo Majluta as the excuse for the delay. Some 104 members of the Comité Central participated in the meeting when it was decided to wait until Monday, 11 March to make the announcement. The deadline is midnight on 16 March.
Before entering the meeting, Leonel Fernández had told the press that he would try to persuade the central committee not to impose a vice-presidential candidate. Mr Fernández’s predecessor, Juan Bosch, was allowed to hand pick his own candidate, choosing unknowns but always men from the party. “I believe in democracy; democracy means pluralism and dissidence.” he said.
As of Friday 8 March, none of the three parties had officially announced their vice presidential candidates, despite the PRD having said that Fernando Alvarez Bogaert would be José Francisco Peña Gómez’s running mate as long ago as 1995.