With over 1.2 million members, the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) is celebrating its XXIII Ordinary Convention this Sunday, an event during which more than 75,000 party posts will be chosen at national, provincial, municipal and zonal levels, as well as others abroad. The most heatedly contested election is for the post of party president, with Ramon Alburquerque, Virgilio Bello Rosa, Emmanuel Esquea Guerrero, Rafael Abinader and Eugenio Martin Taveras as contenders. For the secretary general position, the candidates are Orlando Jorge Mera, Guido Gomez Mazara, Anibal Belliard, Amaury Justo Duarte, Alejandro Abreu, Rafael Diaz Filpo and Almanzor Gonzalez Canahuate.
Organizing commission president, former Vice President Milagros Ortiz Bosch said that this process is unprecedented in Latin America. She explained that as there are over a million registered members voting in the convention, more than 3,000 voting centers have been set up. Some 15,000 people will staff the centers in the DR and abroad. In addition to centers in the DR, voting centers have been set up in New York, New Jersey, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Washington, Boston, Philadelphia, Rhode Island, Puerto Rico, Panama, Venezuela and the Canadian cities of Montreal, Toronto and Quebec City. According to Clave Digital online news service, some 27,763 party members living abroad have registered to vote.
Meanwhile, the media in the DR is flooded with promotional advertising by the leading contenders, many of who have been attending the morning talk shows to outline the reasons why they should be chosen.
The media is focusing on whether the usual chaos and anarchy that has characterized the PRD primaries and conventions will overrun this convention.