Member lawyers of the ruling Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) have proposed attorneys José Manuel Hernández Peguero, Namphi Rodríguez and Ramón Núñez to be the members of a commission of constitutional experts that would render a report to the Political Committee of the party on the model of political party primaries that should be included in the Political Parties Bill. The names of the propose nominees were sent to the PLD in a letter addressed to the president of the organization, San Juan de la Maguana senator Felix Bautista, former President Leonel Fernandez who is president of the PLD and secretary general, National District senator Reinaldo Pared Perez.
The Political Party and the Electoral bills have been stuck in Congress for over 20 years due to particular interests of the ruling parties. This time around it is the PLD where the two leading factions have differences over how the primaries should be organized.
The Medina faction within the PLD favors that the political primaries be organized with any person eligible to vote in the general election being allowed to vote in the primaries of each political party. And since the Medina backed PLD members have the majority in the National Congress, this faction could force through its primary structure preferences. The Fernandez faction of the PLD differed, but agreed that a commission made up of at most five constitutional experts review the proposal of the open primaries.
In 2005, the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ) already had declared a bill that sought to institute open, simultaneous primaries that were organized by the Central Electoral Board (JCE), as again proposed by the Medina faction, was in violation of the Constitution, indicating that this would violate more than one fundamental right.
Former presidential candidate and National District prosecutor, Guillermo Moreno alerted that with an open primaries scheme only pre-candidates who could afford a national campaign and to mobilize millions to vote will be able to successfully run for a party. “One does not have to be a genius to know how the campaigns of those pre-candidates will be financed. Because of that, open primaries will deepen the legitimacy and representativeness crisis of the so-called representative democracy,” he wrote in a commentary in Diario Libre. “Danilo Medina is insisting on the open primaries scheme because he knows that a broad band of the population is vulnerable to political patronage and government welfare, which will allow him to have a mass of voters to build majorities within his party and in other parties,” he observed.
Luis Abinader, former presidential candidate for the leading opposition party, the Revolutionary Modern Party (PRM) proposed that a Bicameral Commission of the Congress undertake reaching a consensus for the passing of the Political Parties Bill and that this not be a decision of the Political Committee of the ruling PLD party nor any group in particular.
Read more in Spanish:
Diario Libre
El Dia
El Nacional
Diario Libre
11 October 2017
