PLD Senator Jose Tomas Perez feels the Law of Primaries could revolutionize politics in the DR. He explained on Orlando Jorge Mera’s talk show “Lideres” on Channel 9 that the law of primaries breaks the traditional closed frameworks of the parties and obliges everyone to use the same voting list of the JCE.
The PLD senator says that those who oppose the law are the same who control the parties’ voters’ lists and computer centers of the parties ? the management and political bureaucracies. He said that the law may require some changes in format only and suggested that the law should be postponed for the deputy and municipal elections until an electronic voting system has been put into place.
He supports the bill because he says it obliges those who want to be candidates to work in their communities, and forces transparency in the organization of the primaries. He said the use of a single voting list and the selection of all candidates on the same day eliminates the possibility of the same voter casting a ballot for more than one candidates, that is, of anyone having duplicate political membership cards and voting for several parties, a practice that is common.
Perez is the only member of his party to have been vocally in support of the law of primaries. Meanwhile, the secretary general of the PLD, Reynaldo Pared Perez, told Hoy newspaper reporters that the law is inapplicable due to the excessive number of candidates’ names that the ballots would have to list.
The JCE has called for the law’s implementation, which will require the institution to organize the presidential, congressional and municipal elections, for which they have requested RD$750 million to begin the congressional and municipal elections of 2006. Judge Salvador Ramos said, however, that the new system could be implemented with RD$70 million.