Vice President and pre-Presidential candidate hopeful Milagros Ortiz Bosch is warning that the current uncertainties surrounding the Central Electoral Board (JCE) could attract the attention of an international commission to scrutinize the elections as happened in 1986. Her statement came in reaction to the pronouncements by JCE president Luis Arias, who proclaimed the selection of President Hipolito Mejia’s candidacy “legal”. She said that it was not in the JCE’s interest to issue decrees, such as the one allowing additional candidates to register for the so-called “PPH convention” last Sunday, and that it was only doing itself a disservice in the process. She said that her Presidential campaign was not in agreement with the convention by which Mejia was elected, and that she and her fellow pre-candidates, once known as “the magnificent seven” and now down to just three (Ortiz Bosch, Rafael Subervi Bonilla and Enmanuel Esquea Guerrero), had tried diverse ways to sort out the divisions in the PRD, from the proposed plebiscite to the meetings of the “magnificent seven.” She said that “the ball was now in the PPH’s court,” and that her group had “explored many avenues” on which to do battle.
In the Diario Libre newspaper, Ortiz is quoted describing the two PRD primary votes as “caricatures” of conventions. She said that she would be addressing the nation on 25 January to outline her position on the PRD crisis and what she believed were the actions needed to achieve a majority candidate to unite the party.
Meanwhile, Presidential pre-candidate Hatuey Decamps is appealing to the Supreme Court to have the JCE’s ruling reversed, in which the December 2003 party convention that named his candidacy was declared null and void. In her “Mi Comentario” column in the Diario Libre, editorial team member Margarita Cordero is critical of the JCE president’s stance. “Instead of diminishing confidence in the electoral tribunal with statements like the one quoted above, or with ambiguous provisos, it should be in the JCE judges’ interest to deny accusations (of bias).”