The Dominican Republic is the Latin American country with the most constitutional changes, according to the Coloquio Constitucional del Programa de Estudios del Desarrollo Dominicano (PED), a program under the Centro de Estudios Económicos y Sociales Padre José Luis Alemán, with the backing of the Law School at Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra (Pucmm).
There have been 39 constitutions, over the 174 years history of the Dominican Republic, the first in 1844. The PUCMM researchers sought to find the underlying causes of the modifications. The researchers confirmed Dominican constitutions have been modified to allow or disallow presidential re-election and the constitutional amendments have regularly been ratified to favor the particular interest of a politician in continuing in the post rather than the collective interest.
The study indicates there were constitutional changes on average every 5.9 years, far more frequently than the international average of 19 years between constitutional reforms.
The study analyzed the constitutional changes beginning in 1961, at the end of the Trujillo Dictatorship to 2017, a period of 56 years and 18 government periods.
The most recent constitutional change was passed in 2015 to accommodate the re-election interest of incumbent President Danilo Medina. His predecessors Leonel Fernandez (2010) and Hipólito Mejía (2002) had also backed constitutional amendments to allow their continuing in power.
The only presidents during whose government constitutional changes were not passed to enable re-election were President Antonio Guzman (1978-1982) and President Salvador Jorge Blanco (1982-1986). President Salvador Jorge Blanco had submitted to Congress a change to the Constitution to ban re-election. His political party was majority in Congress, but the legislators did not pass the bill.
The longest standing constitution was that of 1966 that lasted until 1994. While the 1963 constitution submitted by short-term President Juan Bosch banned re-election, in the 1966 constitution this was reinstated.
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PUCMM
Salvador Jorge Blanco
Hoy
26 February 2018
