The National Council of the Magistracy (CNM) announced that from 27 November to 7 December 2023 public assessment hearings will be held to choose the new judges of the Constitutional Court.
The interviews will be held at the Salon de las Cariátides of the Presidential Palace on the 27th and 29th of November, and on 1, 4, 6 and 7 December 2023.
President Luis Abinader convened the CNM in October to choose replacements for the president of the Constitutional Court, Milton Ray Guevara and four other members. These are Rafael Díaz Filpo, Lino Vásquez Samuel, Justo Pedro Castellanos and Víctor Joaquín Castellanos Pizano who are all part of the original Constitutional Court chosen in December 2011.
Of the 115 aspirants, only five were objected. Legal advisor to President Luis Abinader, Antoliano Peralta, who is the spokesperson for the CNM, said that the five were rejected for not meeting the regulations.
Meanwhile, the Network of Observers for Institutionality (ROI-High Courts) considered that the selection process carried out by the National Council of the Magistracy (CNM) with the candidates who will replace the five judges of the Constitutional Court (TC) has been “not very transparent.”
In a statement, the entity, with the participation of the groups Citizen Participation, Citizen Forum, Deanship of Social Sciences and Humanities of Intec, the Research Center for Women’s Action (Cipaf) and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, warns that the deadline for submitting objections to the applications expired on Monday, 13 November, a period during which six candidates were objected. The organizations complain that the reasons for the challenges have not been published, “depriving citizens of the opportunity to play their surveillance role.”
They reported that the people whose applications were questioned are Amauri Antonio Pimentel Fabián, Argenis García del Rosario, Franny Manuel González Castillo, Mery Laine Collado Tactuk, Diomede Ydelfo Villalona Guerrero and Franklin Emilio Concepción Acosta.
The organizations say that on Friday, 17 November 2023, the CNM met to decide on the objections. “However, the reasons for the challenges were not known, nor have the minutes of the aforementioned session been made known, nor the criteria for rejecting them,” the network warned.
Read more in Spanish:
El Caribe
Diario Libre
22 November 2023