President Luis Abinader has observed and returned to the National Congress a bill that establishes the Official State Bulletin for the publication of congressional amended laws, with the intent to “enrich it moving forward,” El Caribe reports. The legislature is closed until 27 February 2025.
The bill, which was passed during the previous legislative session on 7 January 2025, is the third the President has sent back to the legislature in less than two years. The ruling Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM) has the majority in both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.
The bill, authored by Senator Santiago Zorrilla (PRM-El Seibo), would have created the Official State Bulletin (BOE) to publish updated versions of modified laws in Congress. The Executive Branch issued its observation on Monday, 20 January 2025, just ten days after receiving the legislative framework from the Chamber of Deputies on 10 January 2025.
In a letter addressed to Alfredo Pacheco, President of the Chamber of Deputies, President Abinader explained that the goal is not only to include changes made by legislative instruments such as laws and decrees, but also to incorporate modifications resulting from rulings by the Constitutional Court (TC).
Abinader argued that the scope of the law should be broader than originally envisioned, which was to “regulate the publication of amended laws.” He recommended that the legislation be restructured to comprehensively “regulate the publication and updating of all normative acts from the Legislative and Executive branches, as well as their modifications.”
Rather than establishing a new Official State Bulletin alongside the existing Official Gazette, the President suggested that the Official Government Gazette be equipped with all necessary digital tools to ensure an easily updatable and accessible system for publishing norms in line with modern requirements.
“A law of this magnitude must be approached from a practical governmental and administrative perspective,” Abinader wrote in his letter to Pacheco, adding that such a law should come with a phased implementation to allow for the proper and efficient distribution of resources when launching this ambitious project.
El Caribe reports that the other two pieces of legislation that have been sent back to the legislature by President Abinader are the Civil Aviation Incentive Law (2023) and the Law on the Chamber of Accounts of the Dominican Republic (2024). Both laws were returned with the president’s recommended changes, and the legislative chambers accepted those revisions before passing the final versions.
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El Caribe
27 January 2025