The General Secretariat, a position of maximum power that has always generated desires and conflicts in the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), is today again in the center of its internal attention, after 20 years under the rule of Reinaldo Pared Pérez.
No leader rivals the PLD president more in influence and power than the general secretary. He is its spokesperson and exercises, among other functions, that of party president in case of permanent absence, permanent disqualification or death, until the election of a new one.
The PLD will now be challenged to elect another secretary general, after Pared Pérez resigned from his post in 2001. On that occasion he was elected by a coalition to win the re-election of general secretary José Tomás Pérez. , during the Sixth Congress Professor Juan Bosch. Former President Leonel Fernández was also elected President of the party.
The purple organization and the yellow star had just lost power in the 2000 election, with Danilo Medina running for president. When the PLD regained the presidency of the Republic in 2004 with Fernández as its candidate, in 2005 the Seventh Congress was held by Dr. Rafael Kasse Acta, and Pared Pérez was re-elected to the General Secretariat.
PLD won the 2008 elections again with the re-election of Fernández, and the 2012 elections, with Medina as a candidate. The party did not meet again until 2013, when Commander Norge Botello held the Eighth Congress. One of the main decisions was to confirm the entire leadership in office, including its general secretary, Pared Pérez.
Aspirants
At the end of a decade of turbulent internal events, which led the PLD to a deep division and the loss of power in last year’s elections, the IX Medina José Joaquín Bidó Congress was convened.
In addition to his renewal and other sensitive decisions, PLD members have been forced to elect a new president and secretary general since Fernández resigned and formed another party, while Pared Pérez resigned due to his condition. its health.
The PLD presidency is taken for granted by former President Medina, despite allegations of corruption by many close associates and officials of his government, including two of his brothers sentenced to pretrial detention by a judge.
On the other hand, for the general secretariat, the names of the applicants began to appear, such as the member of the political committee Rubén Jiménez Bichara, close to Medina and former vice president of the powerful Dominican Corporation of State Electric Companies (CDEE), and former deputy José Laluz.
Former senator for Monte Plata, Charlie Mariotti, near Medina, is also running an intense campaign for the general secretariat and the young Juan Ariel Jiménez, son of the influential PLD founder Félix Jiménez (Felucho), and former Minister of Economy of the Medina government.
On this occasion, both the President and the Secretary-General will be elected by the Central Committee, which will be finalized on 14 February, with a registration of approximately 995 members.
A headache
Since the founding of the PLD in 1973, following the resignation of Professor Juan Bosch of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), the general secretariat has become a headache for leader Juan Bosch due to conflicts, expulsions and divisions that have arisen around his incumbents.
In its constituent congress, the organization appointed Antonio Abréu (Tonito) as general secretary, the same degree it held in the PRD. Abréu was part of the first political committee of the PLD consisting of Bosch, José Joaquín Bidó Medina, Rafael Alburquerque and Franklin Almeida.
Tonito Abreu was forced to resign along with a group of leaders to form the Democratic Unity (UD) party in the middle of the First Narpier Díaz Congress, when the first major internal crisis of the PLD broke out. The 1978 elections had just passed, in which his archdiocesan Dominican revolutionary party (PRD) triumphed.
The PLD again experienced a similar situation in 1982, after the elections in which Salvador Jorge Blanco and the PRD were victorious, when working methods and discipline were questioned. Bosch resigned as party chairman, creating an uncertain outlook.
Alburquerque, who was PLD general secretary and had been Bosch’s voting partner in the presidential election, was ousted along with another group of leaders during the Second Nin Diplán Congress, naming Lidio Cadet as general secretary. Eventually, Albuquerque will create its own party, the Dominican People’s Party (PPD).
In the general secretariat of the PLD, the Cadet remained until 1999, when he was defeated by José Tomás Pérez (80% of the votes), in a contest in which Pared Pérez and Ramón Ventura Camejo also aspired, amid great tensions. José Tomás Pérez’s leadership of the general secretariat lasted only two years. His re-election was buried in the 2001 competition for Pared Pérez. However, he ran for the national district senator, defeating Alburquerque, Eduardo Selman and Franklin Almeida. He won the 2002 election to become the only senator to win the PLD.
As can be seen, the general secretaries of the PLD were directly involved in generating the great internal crises that the organization experienced in almost half a century of existence. But the position also served as a springboard to aspire to the presidency of the Republic, although none achieved this goal.
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Presidential candidates
The PLD had only four presidential candidates in almost half a century of existence. Juan Bosch on five occasions (1978, 1982, 1986, 1990 and 1994); Leonel Fernández won them all in three periods (1996, 2004 and 2008); Danilo Medina, three times: lost in 2000 and won in 2012 and 2016. Finally, Gonzalo Castillo, who was defeated in 2020.