The President of the Supreme Court Jorge Subero Isa expressed his opposition to the intent of congressmen to extend their term. The deputies are lobbying for support to present a project to reform the Constitution in order to unify the congressional and municipal election with the presidential election. This would extend their term that ends in 2002 to 2004. Subero Isa says that any reform of the Constitution needs to be the result of agreements of all Dominican society. He is quoted in El Caribe newspaper saying, "You know that my personal position is that the Constitution cannot be constantly reformed because the reforms sometimes respond to political or personal interests The more you reform the Constitution, the more problems the country will have, because what we need is that the citizens respect the laws, not reform these." The group of deputies promoting the reform of the Constitution also wants to lower the percentage needed to win the presidency in a first round from 50% to 45%. The Supreme Court would have the last word in case congressmen were successful in voting on the reform. The reform could be rejected because the Constitution says that laws are not retroactive. Thus the extended period would have to apply to the congressmen elected in 2002 and not to the present congressmen.
