In a meeting held to study the proposals made by PRD pre-presidential candidates, as reported in yesterday?s DR1 news, President Hip?lito Mej?a and key PPH activists are said to have rejected the suggestion that the party hold a plebiscite of its members to select its official presidential candidate.
The PPH is the Hip?lito Presidential Project, the internal PRD faction promoting the President?s re-election.
The PPH favors that the PRD candidate be chosen in the party primary.
Those assembled at the meeting also examined the results of the Gallup-Omnimedia poll published this week, which predicted electoral defeat for the PRD. Guido G?mez Mazara noted the statistic that 81% of the electorate rejected the President?s re-election plans, saying that it needed to be pondered further and blaming the timing of the poll for putting the PRD and the President at a disadvantage.
According to the party sources, a plebiscite would have to be approved by the PRD?s national executive committee, headed by Hatuey Decamps, the party president and himself a pre-candidate. The national executive committee would also have to select an organizing committee and set a date for the referendum. Some party members have commented that the plebiscite option is not covered by the party?s constitution, but pre-candidate Emmanuel Esquea, who put forward the idea, is suggesting that it be modeled on the 1999 process by which Hip?lito Mej?a was selected as the PRD?s presidential candidate for the 2000 election.
Mej?a is said to be planning to re-ignite his re-election campaign through an announcement on his weekly television appearance on the ?Una vez a la semana? program this Sunday evening. Agricultural Minister, and staunch PPH activist, Eligio J?quez told the media that the President would use the show this Sunday to inform the public of his re-election plans.
One of the members of the PRD?s internal mediation committee, Culture Minister Tony Raful, warned that the PRD was jeopardizing its electoral hopes as long as dissention remained. ?We will have nothing to look for on May 16 [2004, the date of the next presidential election],? said Raful.
Hatuey Decamps remains unwavering in his opposition to Mej?a?s candidacy: ?Re-election means defeat,? he told Hoy newspaper.
In his column in El Caribe, Miguel Guerrero writes that a resolution to the crisis in the PRD would come as a relief. At a time of such economic difficulty, he says, a split in the ruling party ?adds an element of political malaise that is very dangerous for the social climate.?