After six months without holding any meetings and amidst a difficult internal situation, the PLD Political Committee convenes this evening, Thursday 26 March 2015, in what is likely to be a thorny meeting. According to reports, the committee members have agreed not to touch upon the issue of the presidential re-election, the hottest topic on the PLD agenda.
According to the agenda, the plan is to reestablish the leadership body’s work pace and to revisit some pending issues. Yesterday, Wednesday 25 March 2015, Interior and Police Minister Jose Ramon Fadul, a Political Committee member, reported that the committee members had agreed not to deal with the re-election issue, because they agreed that the timing was not ideal.
“We have already discussed with others that this is not the moment to cover the electoral issue,” he stated. Fadul added that there were many issues to be dealt with in the Political Committee, including the economy, progress made by the government, the national situation, internal party issues, and the committee’s customary self-analysis.
Nevertheless, one of the PLD’s aspiring presidential candidates, Temistocles Montas, told reporters that there was no way of avoiding a discussion on the controversial issue during the meeting. He said that it would be up to the President himself to ask for the issue to be omitted from the agenda.
“In the end, the Committee itself has the authority to suggest issues, so I believe that the issue of reelection is going to appear,” he stressed. Meanwhile, Ramon Rodriguez (Monchy) said that the issue should be dealt with during the meeting, because Ramon Ventura Camejo sent a letter two months ago requesting the meeting for this very purpose. The agenda itself is debated between the PLD President, the General Secretary and the President of the Republic, and in addition, at the beginning of the meeting, the members are asked if they have some point that they wish to discuss.
The issue is that recent polls show that the PLD would remain in government with incumbent President Danilo Medina running for President, while the outcome is unclear should former President Leonel Fernandez be nominated as the party’s candidate for the 2016 election. The latest Greenberg poll shows that if Fernandez were the PLD candidate, he would be defeated in a second round.