Members of 20 leading civil society organizations requested that the solution to the present political crisis not be the distribution of positions within the board of the Junta Central Electoral, the body in charge of organizing the national elections, to the different political parties. Speaking for the organizations, businessman José Manuel Paliza and Francisco Castillo, of the National Council of Businessmen (CONEP) alerted, "No party director or party militant should be an electoral judge. The main focus of the present political impasse is that the president of the board appointed by the PRD-majority Senate is singled out as a militant PRD man. The PRSC opposition party has contested this situation. Former president of the Junta Central Electoral, Dr. Cesar Estrella Sadhalá also expressed his concern that the political parties gathered for talks sponsored by the highest hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church in the DR choose to appoint representatives of the PRSC and PLD to the board, expanding the number of judges to seven as the solution to the present crisis. Dr. Estrella, who presided over the first undisputed presidential elections in years in 1996, said that to politicize the board would be a step backwards. The success of the 1996 board was attributed to the fact that the members were not known for their political affiliations.
