The Chamber of Deputies suspended its meetings four times during the first 19 days of the current congressional session due to a lack of a quorum or the withdrawal of some deputies, thus breaking a quorum. On the days that there has been the required quorum, sessions have begun after mid-day, to the frustration of the Chamber’s president Rafael Peguero Mendez, who so far has refused to publish the names of the Deputies whose absences cause the sessions to be canceled.
After more than three weeks of “work”, the only major accomplishment of the Chamber has been the selection of Cesar Feliz y Feliz as its opposition representative to the National Council of Magistrates. Important bills affecting areas such as education, the Monetary and Financial Code, and health, have not been debated.
Such actions are perhaps the motivation behind the comments in “El Siglo” magazine in Spain attributed to Leonel Fernandez, in which the president of the D.R. says that the Congress has “neither the prestige nor the image” to block his initiatives, particularly those designed to combat corruption in government.