Hatuey De Camps, president of the ruling PRD party, said he opposes an extension of the presidential, congressional or municipal elected posts. “I would like to make it known that the PRD does not intend to extend the presidential, congressional nor municipal terms. We cannot assume what the people nor the country did not give us and the elections were for four years,” he said. The PRD recently left the Special Presidential Commission for the Constitutional Reform reportedly because the civil society sought equal say in the making of the Constitutional Assembly that would reform the document. The party maintain this is the exclusive right of senators and deputies. De Camps statement made yesterday contradicts the position of the majority of PRD senators and deputies, and other party officers, including legal advisor to the president Guido Gomez Mazara that favor what is known as “bateo y corrido”, or a run for the bases. Hoy newspaper says that a constitutional reform bill that would be presented by Senator Dario Gomez today in the Senate proposes to elect in the 16 May 2002 polls the congressmen and municipal officers for six years in order to unify the presidential and congressional elections in 2008.
