Control over opposition party faces crucial week

Santo Domingo.- Dominican Republic’s biggest opposition party (PRD) faces a decisive week on its immediate future as today 19 of its 25 vice presidents and movement leaders called for prudence and rebuke a call to allegedly carry out “disorder” Monday in afternoon in the surroundings of tis national headquarters and expressed their support for the organization’s president Miguel Vargas.

A meeting of the PRD Political Commission members with ex president Hipólito Mejía in his campaign headquarters is expected for Monday afternoon, prior to formally convening that echelon to evaluate the proposal to expel Vargas and other leaders who last week were accused of “treason” and of the defeat in the May 20 presidential elections.

Also expected is a statement of support for Vargas from 44 deputies as published in the local media today through a public letter to Mejía under the signature of the political consultant Jorge Lendeborg states: “In this defeat Miguel is not the culprit, because if we understood that it was possible to win without him, today we cannot make him responsible.”

The political consultant says Vargas can’t take the blame for the actions of Mejía’s strategists, whom it affirms didn’t understand that in the campaign’s last stage all the negative actions of the rival must be unleashed, and they had instead remained in a passive attitude.