On Monday Senator Milton Ray Guevara (PRD-Saman?) submitted a bill to expand the number of seats on the Central Election Board (JCE) by two. The Senate President, Ram?n Alburquerque (PRD-Monte Plata), immediately created a special committee to consider the proposal which is chaired by Senator Milagros Ort?z Bosch (PRD-Distrito Nacional). [It should be noted that Ms. Ort?z Bosch would be one of the politicians possibly directly affected by such a reform, since she is seeking the PRD nomination for the presidential elections of the year 2000, and the JCE will manage those elections.] Yesterday current JCE President Manuel Ram?n Morel Cerda announced that the JCE would not fight any such increase in its numbers as long as it is mandated by law. Five of the PRD members seeking the party presidential nomination also announced their support for the idea (the sixth "pre-candidate," Senator Abinader, is traveling abroad). In contrast, Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) Secretary-General Lidio Cadet rejected the idea altogether. Speaking at a press conference held yesterday to announce new members of his party’s Central Committee, Cadet insisted that the PLD would accept nothing short of either a "complete restructuring" of the JCE or its expansion by four (not two) seats. In either case, he said, members should be appointed after the three major parties agree by consensus on the nominees, as they did for the Board that ran the 1996 and 1998 elections.The Senate proposal and the quick endorsement by JCE President Morel Cerda has raised an eyebrow or two in Santo Domingo. Just two weeks ago the news daily Listin Diario reported a rumored deal brokered between Morel Cerda and PRSC President Donald Reid Cabral to break the long political crisis about the current JCE. According to the newspaper, the two men had hammered out a pact that would expand the number of Board members by two and would see two former JCE members, Luis Mora Guzm?n and Alejandro Asmar S?nchez, appointed to fill the new seats. The report was hotly denied by both Morel Cerda and Reid Cabral at the time.The JCE crisis started last August, when the PRD-controlled Senate appointed the current five JCE members without first consulting the PRSC or PLD. The PRSC swiftly challenged the appointments in court, claiming that several members, including the new Morel Cerda, were PRD activists and therefore could not be impartial as the law calls for.
