Senator and presidential candidate José Rafael Abinader (PRD-Santiago) submitted yesterday to the Senate a bill to change the sequence of stanzas in the national hymn. The hymn is protected by Article 97 of the Constitution, which declares it to be "unchangeable, unique and eternal." Abinader proposes not changing any of the hymn’s wording, but rather moving stanza 12 to the stanza 4 position. Stanza 12 is the one that moves most Dominicans, with its last line "our fields of glory repeat ‘Liberty, liberty, liberty!’" However, because of the hymn’s length, the stanza is often cut out when the national hymn is played over the radio at noon.
