As President Luis Abinader makes progress in government of the change he has promised to the country, the party that put him in power sends notes that he will repeat the same mistakes made by his political predecessors since the administration of the state .
The first flaw noted with the most beneficial youngest of the Dominican parties, the Modern Revolutionary (PRM), is caused by the political structure, that is, the executive leadership, the political commission, the national commission, and the provincial and municipal presidents .
All members of that high command are absorbed by the state bureaucracy, leaving them little room for partisan work, a practice that ultimately constitutes an abyss of the break from the political base and the “silent mass.”
Palace Moth
The top of the PRM even includes the jovial ex-senator José Ignacio Paliza, 39, who holds the highest hierarchical position as chairman of the party. Now he is the administrative minister of the presidency. Mild Carolina Mejía, spokeswoman and coordinator of the party’s executive functions, also became mayor of the National District.
This experience is not new. This was the case with the Social Christian Reformist (PRSC), Dominican Revolutionary (PRD) and Dominican Liberation (PLD) parties. Leaders Joaquín Balaguer, José Francisco Peña Gómez and Juan Bosch warned without any remedy about the exodus that bureaucracy was causing members and sympathizers.
The balms applied by the three parties that ruled the country for the past six decades have always been violated by the so-called “princely moth,” which armored the president and his officials at all levels and imposed a maxim in the political system: “the mass votes, elites decide ”.
Abinader and change
The PRM and President Abinader covered the PLD’s twenty years in power in last year’s presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections. They brought up the slogan “Change goes”, which recalls the “Change without violence” raised in 1978 by the PRD, Peña Gómez and Antonio Guzmán to defeat Balaguer’s 12 years.
Abinader and the PRM have catalyzed the rejection of youth sectors and the upper middle class, leading mobilizations and cacerolazos demanding an end to impunity in loud cases of corruption in PLD governments. Also cleanliness after the failed local elections in February and respect for the constitution.
These phenomena were pieced together to reinforce the PLD’s idea of change, wear and tear, and divisions, as well as Danilo Medina’s criticized management of the Covid-19 pandemic, amid the pressure exerted by a tied electoral process to conditions imposed by the Constitution.
The PRM was founded on September 9, 2014, with shared leadership between former President Hipólito Mejía and Luis Abinader, after the last major division of the PRD in 2013. Neither leader has a position within the party. When Mejía was the PRD’s last presidential candidate in the 2012 elections, he took Abinader along as his voting partner. Then, already in the PRM, Abinader defeated Mejía with a big advantage in the conventions to choose the presidential candidate in 2015 and 2019.
In the first elections in which the PRM took part in 2016, Abinader took Carolina Mejía, daughter of the former president (2000-2004), as his voting buddy.
The formula was defeated by the questioned re-election of President Medina, but the country was surprised that with just two years of establishment, the PRM got 1,613,222 votes (34.98%) in that general election.
In last year’s elections, the political organization, again with Abinader as candidate, set a new precedent in the country by winning the presidency of the Republic in the first round, just six years after its founding.
The PRM obtained 2,154,876 votes (52.52%), placing number one on the election ballot and taking occasional control over legislative and municipal powers.
Complex scenario
The main weakness attributed to the PRM and its new political leadership is reflected precisely in the party structure.
The organization filed an internal register with the Central Electoral Council (JCE) in September 2019 with 1,303,779 registered people, as a result of the intense recruitment programs of Premil I and II.
In the fervent internal primaries with a closed registration of October 6 of that year, where the presidential candidates of Abinader and Mejía faced again, along with the other candidates Wellington Arnaud, Ramón Burgos, José Rafael Bueno and Ramón Emilio Concepción, the total number was voters had 382,377 votes.
Abinader registered 283,393, and Mejía, showing weak irregularities in the process, got 80,951 votes. Following this defeat, the ex-president has remained on the electoral scene at the age of 79 with discreet participation. Just yesterday, the ex-governor said he had not authorized any leader to promote his candidacy by 2024. “Now is the time to join forces with President Luis Abinader and our government to deliver on the promises we have made to the Dominican people. This is the time for us to give our best, with the best example, ”he said in a statement.
Hipólito’s future
It is visualized that Mejía, who would be 82 years old before the 2024 elections, could prepare in his lito language the presidential race of his daughter Corolina, 51 years old. His staunch student and influential Tourism Minister, David Collado, 49 years old, would also live up to expectations.
In the country there is no recent report of a full-fledged political leader hitting the withdrawal drum. If so, Mejía would be the first. Bosch withdrew after the 1994 election, after five unsuccessful attempts with the PLD and known health restrictions.
For now, in the PRM, only the figure of President Abinader stands out in every official act, ceremony, inauguration and political rally. His saturated presence in the public mind during the first five months of his reign appears to be a strategy to change the style of the National Palace.
Meanwhile, many of the Perremeist officials-leaders are still trying to decipher the government’s arts in the oracles. The ‘mana’ fell to help them, but we must overcome the obstacles imposed by the promised change, amid the health crisis caused by Covid-19, the fall of the economy, prosecution of corruption, signing of a social pact , comprehensive tax reform, electricity pact and other multiple twists and turns.