Former coordinator of the civic watchdog group Citizen Participation, lawyer Pancho Alvarez, recommends that former President Leonel Fernández resort to constitutional experts instead of former military to watch over the 2020 general elections.
Alvarez recommended that the former President and current presidential candidate for the new People’s Force (LFP) political party replace with constitutional lawyers Fernández’s announced assignment of former military and cops “to watch over the transparency of the elections”. The three-time President had announced a committee for the defense of the vote would be placed in each polling station.
“The use of state resources and fraud must be fought in an institutional way, applying the laws through the competent bodies,” Alvarez published in his Twitter account.
“We are going to incorporate our former military and former police colleagues who have experience in all of this and who are going to be there at the polling stations,” said Fernández last week when speaking to his supporters.
Guillermo Guzmán Fermín, who served as Police chief under a past Fernandez administration, said the party has over 5,000 veterans to defend the vote in the 2020 elections acting as delegates for the party in the polling stations this February 2020 and 17 May 2020, as reported by Noticias SIN. The former police chief said that the former military would receive special training to act as party delegates.
Jonathan Liriano, speaking for LFP, told Noticias SIN that the movement La Fuerza de Veteranos con Leonel would send delegates to the voting stations. Leonel Fernández had competed for the presidential nomination for the ruling Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) and claimed major fraud kept him from winning the PLD nomination. Fernández would later form the People’s Force party and seeks to win a fourth term in the 17 May 2020 election.
El Dia in an editorial on 30 December 2019 urges the electoral authorities act to combat voter fraud. The editorialist says this was flagrantly carried out during the 6 October 2019 primary and there is not a single person arrested. Likewise, Diario Libre also editorialized on the warning by the People’s Force that it would send former military as their delegates. The editorial criticizes the stand as anti-democratic.
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30 December 2019