Reelection as carried away five candidates

SANTO DOMINGO. President Danilo Medina took a political decision that few believed was going to change so drastically the electoral panorama of the country, which was very different until the meeting of the Political Committee of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD).last 19 April.

The "hurricane" of the reelection carried away the aspirations of former President Leonel Fernandez, as well as those of the possible candidates Reinaldo Pared Perez, Francisco Javier Garcia, Temistocles Montas and Radhames Segura.

The pacts that are coming together on the political horizon indicate that he also removed from the road the presidential intentions of Miguel Vargas, for the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) and might do the same thing with the Social Christian Reformist Party (PRSC), sooner rather than later.

In spite of the fact that an agreement is forecast, the PRSC President, Federico Antun Batlle, says that this party is preparing to carry out a "long and hard battle because the red ship is taking its route full steam ahead."

For many analysts, before 19 April on the scene leading to the 2016 elections there were the former presidents Leonel Fernandez and Hipolito Mejia as sure rival presidential candidates.

But the President, without publicly referring to or explaining the motives regarding that decided him to defy the president of the PLD, who was aspiring to a fourth presidential candidacy, has managed to dispel the clouds of division which covered his party and even come to an agreement of an alliance in order to approve the constitutional reform with the previously opposing PRD.

Until now things have been going without a hitch in the political arena for President Medina, but it remains to be seen if finally his broad cushion of popularity will be considerably affected or not, because of the reform process and the complaints of the opposition, as well as the agreements which implicate the re-nomination of the current legislators and mayors of the PLD and the PRD.

The goal of the President is to achieve a "consensus" under the proposal of a "Government of National Unity," but at the same time his steps have achieved the division into two blocks of the political panorama, bringing the opposition together with a new leader with few areas where he can be attacked and who has been rising in the numbers of his sympathizers, according to the majority of the most recognized surveys.

With the Constitution proclaimed and the first great objective achieved, what follows is for the Political Committee to meet in the coming days in order to lay down the electoral calendar of that party and elect their presidential candidate.

It is expected that the Central Committee of the PLD will be convened to choose the electoral commission and define right there if there will be another aspiring candidate who will assume the challenge of competing against President Medina in a primary process.

The PLD has traditionally elected their presidential candidate between June and July, so that everything seems to be coolly calculated by the President and the sector that supports him.

In addition to Luis Abinader, Antun Batlle of the PRSC; Juan Cohen of the National Party of Citizen Will (PNVC) and are also presidential candidates, and Guillermo Moreno is also decided to run in case his party Alianza Pais is recognized.

And there are still the decisions by Max Puig, the former presidential candidate of the Alliance for Democracy (APD), and that of Eduardo Estrella, the former presidential candidate of the Dominicans for Change party, since everything indicates that Amable Aristy will proclaim Medina as the candidate of the Liberal Reformist Party (La