The President of the Central Electoral Council (JCE), Román Jáquez Liranzo, reported that political parties will start receiving the economic benefits offered by the state starting next week.
Jáquez explained that an agreement had been reached with the Ministry of Finance to resolve the stalemate over the amount of money that parties should receive and that political organizations all receive $ 1,260 million in RD and not half of it.
“This week, the Minister of Finance sent a communication to the General Budget Directorate, so that we can be credited with 630 million pesos as a budget for the first semester and this was done, and on Friday we were credited with half for the first six months. Starting next week, we will start with the distribution, in accordance with our statutes “, said Jáquez Liranzo when he was interviewed by journalist Adolfo Salomón on the program Verdades al Aire which is broadcast on CDN channel 37.
He added that the remaining $ 630 million RD for the second half, they will be accredited by an additional budget in August and that this was the “solution” they found and that it was agreed with the political parties.
These statements come after earlier this week, the budget director told LISTÍN DIARIO that every month he delivers the parts to the Central Electoral Council (JCE) in installments, the twelfth of the 630.2 million, that it is within the competence of the parties and that that “does not understand” the reason why the electoral body did not distribute the economic resources to the political organizations.
“They have not deposited any pesos because the Council tells them that they will not accept an amount that has not been established by law,” Dantés concluded.
The detailed budget on the Digepres page provides for the delivery of RD $ 630,200,000 to political organizations, while the other half appears in the “does not apply” category.
The executive branch initially ordered the allocation of 1,260 million pesos to be distributed among political parties, however, in October last year, the President of the Republic, Luis Abinader, announced that he would propose to the National Congress to reduce 50% of their share. I’m getting. political parties, because this year was not an electoral one and so would use these resources to build the expansion of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD) in the municipality of Santo Domingo Este, but that this would have been done with the consensus of political parties and the JCE.
At the end of January, the JCE plenary session sent a letter to the Directorate-General for Budget requesting the full release of those resources, to which the government institution replied that they did not have the “power” to do so.
A few days later, the presidency’s administrative minister, José Ignacio Paliza, said that the government would accept the Central Electoral Council’s request to keep the distribution of funds from political parties without cuts and would not enter into a dispute with them. .
Law 33-2018 on political parties, groups and movements states that 80% of the resources allocated by the Executive Branch to be distributed among political parties will be redistributed equally among parties that exceed 5% of the votes in the last election.