Just days after a poll showed him to be the favorite choice of most Dominicans to be the Reformista (PRSC) candidate for President in the year 2000, former Vice President Jacinto Peynado announced that he would launch "within hours" the process to make him an official PRSC presidential precandidate. Besides completing the registration process within the party and organizing his campaign apparatus, Peynado said he would shortly convene a group of experts to help him update the platform he ran on during the 1996 presidential elections. He called for the PRSC candidate to be selected through a set of primary elections, as this was the most transparent and democratic manner to pick a standard-bearer. As for whether the PRSC should enter into a coalition agreement with the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) as it did in 1996, Peynado did not rule out the idea as long as the PRSC, not the PLD, led the coalition this time. But he felt that the party should make it clear that it is not allied with PLD and that it has its own ideas, agenda and platform to offer the Dominican electorate.
