Hoy newspaper’s Coctelera columnist highlights today the words of Central Electoral Board (JCE) Judge Salvador Ramos, who said that the JCE would implement the new law on primaries with or without a budget. According to the law, the electoral institution now bears the burden of funding and organizing the primaries to elect the city councilors, city mayors, legislators in the 2006 election, and the presidential and vice-presidential candidates in 2008. The JCE has requested funds of RD$747 million, while Ramos said this week it could be done with RD$70 million. “The law will be implemented, with a budget or without a budget,” stated Ramos. The columnist says that the government should take heed that they can put the new law to practice without any budget and spare Dominican taxpayers this admittedly unnecessary expense.
Journalist Juan Bolivar Diaz, writing in Hoy newspaper, has stated that the Law of Primaries will be impossible to implement. By his estimate, the way it is written could allow over 40,000 pre-candidates for elected positions to be included in the primary ballots. Roberto Rosario, the JCE judge who represents the PLD, is the lone voice within the JCE that opposes the law. He said that the law’s lack of feasibility could make it a trap that would lead the JCE to the slaughterhouse, rendering it unable to serve as arbiter for the 2006 congressional and municipal elections. The Law of Primaries will have to be tested by the most complicated of elections ? the municipal and congressional election of 2006 in which 32 senators, 150 deputies, 135 mayors, 135 vice-mayors and thousands of city councilors will be elected. The PLD hopes to win a majority in the municipal and congressional elections, a condition that is currently enjoyed by the opposition. Rosario has forecast institutional chaos that could move the country to an unnecessary situation of ungovernability.