Hoy newspaper reports that the president of the Central Electoral Board (JCE), Luis Arias, has said that the bid by Milagros Ortiz Bosch and Rafael “Fello” Subervi Bonilla to stand as independent candidates in the 16 May Presidential election is “inadmissible” under the terms of current electoral law. Meanwhile, all the papers carry the news that the party convention scheduled for Friday is going ahead without the three pre-candidates’ participation. President Hipolito Mejia and a political unknown, Frank Joseph Thomen, who is a close friend of the President, will compete for the Presidential nomination. Ortiz Bosch branded Sunday’s convention as divisive, and named the PPH faction of the PRD, which promotes Mejia’s candidacy, as responsible for the seemingly irreparable rifts in the party. According to the Diario Libre, there are conflicting versions of the outcome of the meeting between the President and Ortiz Bosch, Subervi Bonilla and Esquea Guerrero which took place on Wednesday evening. According to the three pre-candidates, the President agreed to postpone Sunday’s convention, while the President emphatically states this was not the case. Milagros Ortiz Bosch called the decision to go ahead with the convention a “political blunder” with serious consequences for the future of the party and the country. In her opinion, the convention is nothing more than “a dead end street towards division,” for which reason she called on all PRD members to halt its process.