In interviews with the news dailies El Siglo and Listin Diario, Senate President Ram?n Alburquerque [Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) – Monte Plata] rejected President Fern?ndez’s call in his State of the Union address for work to begin on constitutional reform. He suggested that the nation had too many other things to work on at the moment, and that constitutional reform was best left to the government to be elected in May 2000. He also rejected the idea of establishing a Constituent Assembly to reform the Constitution, saying it made no sense and that Congress was capable of undertaking the task when the time came. He did welcome, however, Fern?ndez’s call to include new provisions in the Constitution for referendums and plebiscites on major questions, but cautioned the formulation of such options needs to be studied and debated in depth first.
