Ruling Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) politician Melanio Paredes understands the imposing of open primaries as included in the Political Parties Bill that passed in the Senate will cause “serious problems” for the country.
The former director of Infotep and former Minister of Education said that the primary process methodology should be left up to each political party to decide. He said the methodology to choose their political candidates is already established by polices outlined in the internal statutes of the political parties.
Paredes warned that if the legislative bill fails to pass the Chamber of Deputies it could return to the Senate and become a sort of political ping pong match, much like what has occurred with the Penal Code. If so, Paredes said, the country would end up with little to show for so much effort.
Opposition leader Luis Abinader of the PRM has said that the law as passed by the Senate would not make it through the Chamber of Deputies. He explained that he felt that there were enough deputies prefer that each party decide how to compose its voting rolls for the primaries and that these deputies will block the Danilo Medina administration from securing the needed majority to pass the legislative proposal.
Other political analysts agree that there is sufficient opposition in the lower chamber to the bill that would prevent its passage. Debates on this type of bill have been ongoing for more than 20 years in congress. Analysts say that the political parties stand to continue to benefit if the controls and checks on campaign spending included in several articles in the bill does not pass.
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El Nacional
3 May 2018
