The civic movement known as Participation Ciudadana (Citizen Participation) released last week its endorsement of the advances contained in the recently approved Political Parties and Groups Law 33-18. The civic group says, nevertheless, that it regrets that some aspects of the legislation go against the demands of the Dominican population.
Their press release says: “After two decades of promoting the need for a legal framework in order to strengthen democracy and provide transparency in the political system, Citizen Participation accepts and celebrates the advances contained in the Political Parties Law.”
The movement also asked for the people to be aware that in the future this law would be improved through additional regulations that implemented by the Central Electoral Board (JCE) in consultation with the party system stakeholders.
According to the civic group, the most significant advances are in regards to the reduction of the cost of the political campaigns by the candidates and a greater control of the sourcing of campaign financing, which should translate into a more balanced access by members of the population with fewer resources to elective positions.
The civic group says that a three-month limit for campaigning has been set and the political rallies must be carried out in locations that do not affect the transit of public thoroughfares.
They also noted that the only sources of financing established by the law are individual contributions, contributions made by the state and money coming from party activities.
Another positive step of the law is the disposition that all parties, groups and movements should have membership rolls that are up to date and registered with the JCE each year.
For Citizen Participation, the most negative aspect of the law is that which is contained in the paragraph III of article 45 that leaves up to each party’s leadership the deciding of what type of voter registration and voting rolls will be used in the election of their candidates. The civic group release understands this may be in violation of the political party statutes and principles contained in articles referring to internal democracy, and could be open to challenges to this article on constitutional grounds.
The group also questions the effectiveness of the articles concerning financing of primary elections since the money supplied by the government in a pre-electoral year is not enough to cover costs for the primaries.
The PC also said that it has serious reservations regarding the workload that is placed on the JCE that now must organize up to two types of primary elections at the same time and process the results within five days, especially considering the experiences of the two weeks that it has taken to count the preferential vote for just 190 deputies in the congressional and municipal elections since 2002 including those of 2016 which saw that hundreds of voting stations were never concluded.
Read more in Spanish:
Participacion Ciudadana
El Dia
20 August 2018
