Former President Leonel Fernández has said that to order political parties to conduct simultaneous and open primaries into the 2020 presidential election would be unconstitutional and a blow to institutionalism.
He said that the current debate about the issue makes no sense as the Supreme Court of Justice had already ruled on the matter in 2005. In the 2010 Constitution, and maintained in the 2015 Constitution, Art. 277 establishes that judicial decisions reached prior to the proclamation of the 2010 Constitution by the Supreme Court of Justice are not be subject to review by the Constitutional Court.
Fernandez writes that to continue with the matter would open a Pandora’s Box, meaning that other rulings already made could also be revisited. He also said it would put judicial security in danger and could affect the business climate.
Fernandez made the comments in the “Global Observation” published every 15 days in a national newspaper. Fernandez considers that political parties should be able to arrange their own primaries on dates and the rules of the primaries should be determined by the parties themselves. He said the Constitution conceives the political parties as free organizations and it would not be right to impose open primaries on them.
Fernandez has sent the media a press release going on record saying that the legal security of the country would be in danger, the business climate and the social and democratic state of law enshrined as a constitutional principal in the national legal system if the Medina administration decides to go ahead and impose open and simultaneous primaries.
Read more in Spanish:
El Nacional
7 Dias
Al Momento
5 December 2017
