The media is reading between the lines of the unscheduled meeting that took place between former President Hipolito Mejia and President Danilo Medina at the Presidential Palace yesterday, Monday 8 April. <\/p>\n
The meeting was said to have formalized the renewal of the close personal relationship that had existed until last year’s election campaign. Mejia ran against Medina for the Presidency in the 2012 election and lost 51.21% to 46.95%. <\/p>\n
As well as friendship, this new approach between Medina and Mejia hints at what could be a framework for a political agreement to achieve the approval of the Political Parties Bill, with the administration choosing the former President as the representative leader of the opposition PRD, and not the party’s president, Miguel Vargas Maldonado. <\/p>\n
A similar thing had already happened with the Blue Ties Pact, signed on 14 May 2009 between then President Leonel Fernandez and the former PRD presidential candidate Miguel Vargas, for the constitutional reform that was subsequently passed with the support of PRD legislators on 26 January 2010. <\/p>\n
On that occasion, Vargas was sought out as the leader of the PRD majority, in a strategic move aimed at preventing the creation of a front in the National Congress that would have been made by Danilo Medina and Hipolito Mejia in anticipation of the chance that Fernandez would push for constitutional reform to enable his reelection. At the time Fernandez and Mejia were prevented from running for President by the Constitution. But the pact paved the way for Fernandez to run in 2012, but it became a poisoned chalice for Vargas when Mejia held a successful campaign and won the party’s primary to run against Medina in the 2012 election. PLD strategists saw Mejia as a weaker candidate. <\/p>\n
With the Blue Ties Pact, Fernandez succeeded in paving the way for his return to power in 2012. He accepted the condition imposed by Vargas that banned consecutive presidential reelection.<\/p>\n
Readers should recall that the President himself acknowledged his close friendship with Mejia and his family on 21 May last year in his victory speech after the electoral triumph at the PLD headquarters. Before 1973, Medina and Mejia were members of the same party. <\/p>\n
El Dia reported that Miguel Vargas was not available for comment on the meeting. <\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.diariolibre.com\/dlenglish\/2013\/04\/09\/i378472_medina-and-mejia-start-anew.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The media is reading between the lines of the unscheduled meeting that took place between former President Hipolito Mejia and President Danilo Medina at the Presidential Palace yesterday, Monday 8 April. The meeting was said to have formalized the renewal of the close personal relationship that had existed until last year’s election campaign. Mejia ran … <\/p>\n