The plenary of the Supreme Court of Justice declared unconstitutional the controversial Law of Primaries. If upheld, this law would have required the Central Electoral Board (JCE), the government body that organizes elections, to also fund and organize the primaries to elect the city councilors, city mayors and legislators in the 2006 election. The JCE would also have been responsible for organizing the presidential primaries to choose the presidential candidates into the 2008 election. The law has met with widespread objection and many consider it too “impracticable and expensive.”
President Leonel Fernandez had been one of its most vocal opponents, arguing that the law lacked universal consensus, and that it had not been consulted with all the parties concerned.
The court ruled that this law violates the principle of non-retroactivity of the law by turning the political parties’ primaries into national elections, which Supreme judges understand is in violation of the Constitution of the Republic.
The unconstitutionality motion had been filed with the high court by the lawyer Julio Cesar Castanos, the former head of the Fundacion Institucionalidad y Justicia (Finjus).
Opinions for and against the law have crossed the parties’ lines, being supported by some and objected to by others within the same political forces. Proponents argued that the law would promote the renovation of the national political leadership because it broke the traditional closed frameworks of the parties and obliged everyone to use the same voting list of the JCE. Objectors, on the other hand, alleged that the law had been hastily approved by the National Congress at the end of the last administration, without due consensus from the different sectors of the national life.
The JCE had originally requested funds of RD$747 million to organize the primaries, while subsequently Judge Salvador Ramos said they could be organized with RD$70 million.