Diario Libre’s Adriano Miguel Tejada says that political parties are unable to settle their own differences and incapable of listening to the voice of the people, as expressed through this week’s two-day protest strike. “If the voice of the people is the voice of God, then the senators and deputies are atheists.” He ends by saying: “To approve the Ley de Lemas in the midst of this crisis shows the malaise in our system of government.” The writers of the government-intervened Listin Diario, however, have rallied behind the proposed law, with Tirso Mejia Ricart, one of the bill’s main promoters, and others such as Angel Luis Alvarez, singing its praises in the op-ed columns. Alvarez, who like Mejia Ricart sees the Ley de Lemas as a way of unifying divided political parties, says that those who are critical of the multiple-voting system are usually middle-ranking political hacks seeking control and influence within their party. Flavio Dario Espinal, writing in El Caribe, says that whether or not the PRD succeeds in pushing through this piece of electoral reform, their fundamental problems will remain unresolved. He sums these up as the lack of confidence in leadership, the apparently irreconcilable rifts in the party and an erosion of the PRD’s social bases, and chalks them up to their inability to focus on the country’s economic problems. Hoy newspaper’s Bienvenido Alvarez Vega chronicles the machinations of the PPH’s Eligio Jaquez, describing the series of political and legal amendments needed to tailor the system to the PRD’s requirements, above the heads of such institutions as the Church, the political parties and civil society.