The highly-touted political convention, called by one faction of the PRD party and scheduled for yesterday, has been postponed for another week. The rescheduling came after three of the presidential hopefuls requested a new date. Depending on which paper one reads, the reason for the postponement varied from poor organization (Hoy) to the threat of fraud (El Caribe). The Listin Diario said that Milagros Ortiz Bosch had requested the postponement due to the fact there were 475,000 names missing from the electoral rolls, while at the same time there was listed a curiously large number of well-known members of the PRSC, the Catholic clergy, and the PLD. According to Eligio Jaquez, Agricultural Minister and coordinator for the PPH movement (Proyecto Presidencial Hipolito), there was a simple explanation for the discrepancies. He told reporters that what had probably happened was that personnel for the different candidates, anxious to augment the number of people supporting their candidate, simply copied entire voter registration records onto CDs that were going to be used for the PRD convention.
President Mejia took advantage of the delay to describe his opponents as “scared”. Hatuey De Camps, the official candidate for the other faction of the party, said to reporters, “I told you so.” De Camps said he had warned the three presidential hopefuls participating in the nominating convention alongside President Mejia that they were heading into a “?slaughterhouse, given the zinc and wood, all the money and helicopters all over the place?” Previously, the other candidates had accused the PPH faction of purposely scheduling the distribution of zinc and wood materials for rebuilding houses to coincide with and detract from the political rallies of the other candidates. Eligio Jaquez said that this concurrence was merely a “coincidence.”