Santo Domingo. RD
The qualified majority mechanism required by the Constitutional Court to pass a sentence has at times become a stumbling block that has prevented the files from being dealt with at the speed that citizens seek, especially when it comes to thorny or conflicting issues , such as immigration and national sovereignty. and certain political issues.
The Constitution requires that the judgments of the Constitutional Court be approved with the positive vote of at least 9 of its 13 judges, which is called a qualified majority, so that this requirement must be met in the deliberations of the plenary sitting, due to the the opposite does not happen and it must be presented again at a different time.
Apparently this is what happened to the air transport pre-authorization agreement signed in 2016 by the governments of the Dominican Republic and the United States, which instituted a pre-check procedure in air transport by customs and border protection officials of the United States Department of Homeland Security in an area of the Punta Cana International Airport.
It was learned that this agreement, which was submitted for constitutional review by then-President Danilo Medina four years ago, has been presented several times to reach a decision, but had to be withdrawn from the table as not enough votes were gathered to issue a decision. sense.
The Magna Carta empowered the Constitutional Court to exercise preventive scrutiny of international treaties before they are ratified by the National Congress, for which they must be submitted to the President of the Republic.
Signing international treaties or conventions is an attribution that the Constitution grants to the first president, but in order to be valid and to bind the country, they must be submitted to the legislative chambers. This must be done after the Constitutional Court has examined it to determine whether its content violates constitutional provisions.
The TC has approved dozens of international agreements that the Dominican Republic has signed with various countries and international organizations, but has annulled some as unconstitutional, mainly because they undermine national sovereignty.
ANTENNA
Transport.
The air transport pre-authorization agreement was signed on December 8, 2016 by the Dominican Republic’s Secretary of State, Miguel Vargas, in the government of Danilo Medina, and the then US Ambassador to the country, James Brewster.