The participants in the political dialogue agreed in principle last night on a solution to the dispute over the composition of the Central Election Board (JCE). The official "moderator" (not mediator) and spokesman for the dialogue, Monsignor Agripino N??ez Collado, announced only that representatives of the three main political parties had met privately with President Leonel Fern?ndez before the official start of the sixth dialogue session to discuss proposals on the JCE, and then the dialogue agreed in principle on the compromise reached, which now must be ratified by the directorates of the three parties. The three parties are the ruling Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) and the Reformist-Social Christian Party (PRSC). The group that met privately with President Fern?ndez before the formal dialogue session were PRD President Enmanuel Esquea Guerrero, PRSC leader Donald Reid Cabral and Danilo Medina, part of the PLD leadership and a strategic advisor to President Fern?ndez.Although N??ez Collado did not outline the details of the accord, reporters from all media quickly got the details leaked from participants. In a nutshell, the JCE’s membership would be expanded from five to seven and the current President, Dr. Manuel Ram?n Morel Cerda, would be asked to resign. This agreement is quite close to the demands of the PRSC, which has long advocated an expansion of the Board to seven members and called for the resignation of all current members, which it considered to be PRD partisans. Despite their public insistence on all five resignations, PRSC leaders had long hinted that the real bottom line was Morel Cerda’s resignation.Ratification of the agreement will be tricky, especially for the PRD, many of whose top leaders have repeatedly warned that they could not accept pressure on any of the current JCE members to resign. The current JCE members were all appointed in August 1998 by a PRD-dominated Senate without seeking prior consensus with the PLD and PRSC, as had been done in 1994. Further complicating matters is that Morel Cerda has said repeatedly and unequivocally that he will not resign and that there is "no constitutional way" to remove him from office.
