Fight for PRD leadership will keep internal divisions

SANTO DOMINGO. Although the Jose Francisco Peña Gomez Congress served to reach some basic understandings within the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), the forecasts indicate that the internal strife will continue in the fight for leadership between the possible nominees for the party's presidential candidate.

The greatest difference will continue surfacing between the former President Hipolito Mejia and the PRD president Miguel Vargas Maldonado, the two figures of the greatest weight in the party.

For the director of the Dominican Academy of Political Science, Freddy Angel Castro, the Congress served as a tactical agreement between the PRD actors which, thanks to getting the Miguel/Hipolito rift of the center stage, cleared up the horizon with respect to the celebration of the nominating convention.

"The internal struggles are going to continue, you can see that from this moment an improvement, a lowering of the intensity of the language, of the criticisms, but all this will be part of the sociological reasoning and behavior of the PRD which, without a doubt, within a few days, will once more return to the bigger levels of struggle with respect to their political positions", he emphasized.

In the judgment of the political scientist, the recent PRD congress formed part of the tactical and minimum agreements between the different factions.

Nonetheless, he did say that the event allowed for an understanding between the different PRD forces that although it is small, will contribute to operating within a framework of respect within the party.

The position of the PRD president with respect to the Congress is one says it was "an important step forward that sends the country a new signal that we are getting over the old signs of the past".

He praised the disciplined and constructive atmosphere in which the debates were carried out, the debates that he said were made up of the consensus which voted on the resolutions.

Moreover, he said that once the work of the Congress was finished, the party leadership will fulfill its part by converting the decisions into part of the regulations and party policies. He also greeted the wisdom of the resolution that established the need to cut down the size of the party organs, since one problems of the PRD is that its highest leadership bodies have "reached elephantine proportions".

The PRD leadership held the Jose Francisco Peña Gomez Congress last weekend. They agreed to hold the nominating convention that will select the party's 2012 presidential nominee next March. The Congress was attended by nearly all of the party's most important leaders and all of the heads of the different factions.

Agreements during the Congress

During the event, the leadership agreed to reduce the PRD party organs, specifically the Political Commission and the National Executive Committee (CEN), a proposal that receive majority support from the different work groups. Moreover, they agreed that a high level committee will work out a proposal for the restructuring of the party.

This proposal should be presented to the Commission in charge of reforming the PRD statutes. Some 1,400 delegates of the national leadership, municipal, zonal, mass groups, and delegates from overseas took part in the event.

Diario Libre