Former President Leonel Fernandez, who is the president of the ruling PLD party, has announced that he will be speaking on television at 10pm this evening, Monday 25 May 2015. The speech on Channel 5 can also be followed online at leonelfernandez.com and pld.org.
Fernandez is expected to set out his position on the possibility of changing the 2010 Constitution, which allows him to run for President in 2016 but bans consecutive re-election, thus preventing President Medina from running.
Ruling party opinion on the issue is split between supporters of changing the 2010 Constitution to allow the popular President Danilo Medina to run for re-election, and supporters of former President Leonel Fernandez’s aspirations to be the PLD candidate in the 2016 presidential election.
The influential party Political Committee ruled in favor of the re-election bid on 19 April 2015, but this has been rejected by Fernandez’s supporters in Congress. The National Constitutional Revisory Assembly has yet to be convened.
Diario Libre reports that the speech comes after discussions between Franklin Almeyda Rancier and Rafael Alburquerque, representing former President Fernandez, and Jose Ramon Peralta and businessman Jose Miguel Gonzalez Cuadra for President Medina.
An editorial in El Caribe newspaper today, Monday 25 May 2015 comments that former three-term President Leonel Fernandez faces one of the most difficult times in his very successful political career.
http://www.diariolibre.com/noticias/2015/05/25/i1164031_leonel-danilo-avanzan-negociaciones-salida-crisis-pld-discurso-genera-grandes-expectativas.html