Santo Domingo, RD.
The Dominican Liberation Party (PLD, the main opposition party) will elect its leadership tomorrow in a closed-door vote, in which former governor Danilo Medina is expected to take over the presidency by acclamation to formalize his internal leadership.
Medina, who ruled between 2012 and 2020, after promoting the amendment to the Constitution to reintroduce re-election, was nominated by several leaders in the PLD presidency and, although she did not react, no other names are calling to take office.
The mayor of Santiago (north, second in the country), Abel Martínez, and the candidate for general secretary of the PLD Rubén Bichara, among others, proposed that the former head of state be elected president of the party.
Everything seems to indicate that the former president will not have the slightest obstacle to assume his position, unless, in a surprise move, he himself decides not to accept it.
The PLD will also elect its secretary general and the remaining 43 members of its political committee, the body that exercises power in that party, founded in December 1973 by former President Juan Bosch after leaving the presidency of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD). . ), which he also founded in Havana, Cuba, in 1939, where he opposed the dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo.
Although Medina does not seem to have any opposition to occupying the highest position in the PLD, he will have the task of “rebuilding” in front of him an organization that won the 2016 elections with over 60% of the vote and lost them. four years later in favor of 37% of the electorate.
With former Public Works Minister Gonzalo Castillo running for president of Medina, the PLD left power after 16 consecutive years at the helm of the government, the first eight of them under former President Leonel Fernández.
Fernández left the PLD after losing the mayors of October 2019 by less than 1%, when he claimed that the government of his own party orchestrated an alleged fraud in order to favor his rival.
Prior to this, the majority sector of the PLD controlled by Medina tried unsuccessfully to amend the Basic Law again to allow it a third consecutive presidential nomination.
Then came the figure of Castillo, whom Medina openly claimed to be the “new blood” of the community.
With a divided PLD, the July 2020 presidential election was won in the first round by the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM), which had previously won most of the town halls in the municipalities in March of that year, scheduled to take place a month earlier, but suspended due to problems with the electronic voting system. These trials took place in the midst of the pandemic.
In November last year, the Dominican Public Prosecutor’s Office announced the arrest of Medina’s brother and sister, as well as a group of former government officials allegedly involved in a network dedicated for several years to defrauding the state.
Medina’s brother is part of the group of defendants in pre-trial detention, while his sister is under house arrest.