President Luis Abinader has asked the Senate to move on who will represent the second majority in the Senate in the National Council of the Magistracy (CNM). The importance lies in that the CNM chooses the judges of the higher courts and judges need to be elected to the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Justice soon.
Now Jose Ignacio Paliza, president of the ruling Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM), says that the Senate’s second majority should go to the People’s Force (FP). The FP was founded in 2020 when former president of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), the former President Leonel Fernández argued he had been the victim of fraud in the PLD primary.
Of the opposition parties, the FP now has the most senators. Yet, the PLD argues that these senators were elected on the PLD ticket, even though they later switched to the FP.
The PLD has also argued that the FP was an ally to the PRM for many candidacies in the 2020 congressional election. Both the PRM and the FP backed the candidacy of Eduardo Estrella of Dominicanos por el Cambio (DxC) in Santiago. Estrella won the ticket for his party and the alliance and was named president of the Senate. He gets the seat in the CNM, and the alliance disqualifies the PRM as second majority, despite Estrella being of a different political party.
Meanwhile, the president of the Senate Justice Committee, Antonio Taveras Guzmán (Santo Domingo-PRM), said on Wednesday, 7 October 2020, that the Senate will take its time to review the case of who should get the second political majority seat for the National Council of the Magistracy (CNM).
“I do not want to speculate now. There are countless interpretations of what the Dominican Constitution says and also previous practices that must be reviewed as if they were jurisprudence,” said Taveras Guzman.
He said he would not be pressured. He said he would recommend what the Constitution mandates and not what external entities or blocks of parties say.
The PRM is deciding on only two seats in the CNM — that of the President Abinader himself and his choice for Attorney General Miriam German Brito. Nevertheless, Attorney General German Brito is not a PRM party member and is regarded as “an independent.”
So far, the known members of the CNM are President Luis Abinader, Senate president Eduardo Estrella (Dominicans for Change), Chamber of Deputies president Alfredo Pacheco (PRM), Supreme Court president Luis Henry Molina, Supreme Court judge Nancy Salcedo Fernández (named on 1 October) and Attorney General Miriam German Brito.
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N Digital
Listin Diario
7 October 2020