There is already one independent candidate, the journalist Raul Perez Pena (“el Bacho”), who makes some acerbic observations about the issue of the splintering of political parties in his Listin Diario column. He concludes that one of the arguments against the electoral reform bill, that it will only serve to further splinter the divided political parties, is on the contrary actually a good thing. The public stands to gain, if what he calls “state control by a monopoly of politicking party structures” is broken. It is up to the parties to sort out their own internal crises, adds el Bacho, and “no one will weep at this particular funeral.” Other columnists share a consensus that the proposed law merely carries over the PRD’s internal strife – as party leaders cannot decide who will be the candidate in the 2004 election – to the national arena. Margarita Cordero says in the Diario Libre that the PRD has left it too late to sort out the discord within its party, and calls the proposed electoral reform solution “a threat to democracy” because it will create what she defines as “political corporations” instead of political parties. She concludes that what is needed is to improve and increase the structures and mechanisms that allow democratic participation within the parties themselves.