Dominican Republic’s biggest opposition party widens rift

Santo Domingo.- The rift within the biggest opposition party (PRD) widened Sunday when its president accused Dominican Republic’s former president Hipolito Mejia of violating what he called a "preliminary agreement" reached in a meeting on May 3 at the villa of former Armed Forces minister Jose Miguel Soto.

Miguel Vargas, in a letter "to the country and the grand PRD family,” said the agreement was to support him as the PRD candidate in the 2016 presidential elections.

He said Mejía agreed not to challenge him for the PRD candidacy in exchange for designating Mejia’s daughter, Carolina Mejia as his ticket mate, “an expectancy which the same former president Mejía set forth, when months earlier affirmed that she was his political heir, a fact that was reported in the media."

He said it was also agreed that Mejia’s sector would be provided “a quota” in the party’s leadership, "guaranteed in a transparent and exemplary convention process,” and “in an eventual administration of the PRD, if my candidacy succeeds, have a number of public service posts secured."

Vargas added that on he visited Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez and Monsignor Agripino Nuñez Collado May 7, to apprise them of the pact, and for the Catholic Church to witness the agreement, should it materialize, which he affirms both prelates accepted.