Political parties have from this July to November to decide on their candidates for the February 2024 municipal election and congressional and presidential candidates for the May 2024 election.
The case of the National District Mayor is one of the most interesting. Incumbent Mayor Carolina Mejía is not enthusiastic about continuing in the position. Her predecessor, David Collado only served one term before moving on to be Minister of Tourism.
Her not having a definitive decision on whether she will run or not has opened the way for several contenders to register for the pre-campaign. Diario Libre says that Mejía does not want to continue, but President Luis Abinader understands she guarantees the ruling Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM) will retain the city government. The numbers are in her favor. Mejía says she will make a responsible and conscious decision.
916,166 people are registered to vote in the National District. This is 11.36% of the total electorate of 8,068,260 voters.
Meanwhile, there has been no scarcity of National District mayor hopefuls. Among these are Neney Cabrera, Aníbal Díaz, Alberto Atallah, Fellito Suberví. Deputy Orlando Jorge Villegas is the most recent to announce his aspirations. The president of the Chamber of Deputies Alfredo Pacheco had also aspired to the position but desisted.
Mejía said she discussed other possible strong candidates for the capital city mayor candidacy with President Abinader when they last met, but that there is nothing definite yet. “We are talking about the different options and alternatives that we have,” she said as reported in Diario Libre.
If she decides to run, Mejía will most likely be running against Domingo Contreras of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), her lead contender in 2020. At the time, polls had said Contreras would win the mayor seat. When the election was cancelled in 2020 due to computer error, Mejía would defeat Contreras after a generalized rejection of the ruling party by a majority of voters.
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Diario Libre
11 July 2023