Local February 15, 2020 | 8:09 am

Eyes of the world on municipal elections in the DR

Interview on the electoral tournament that will take place this Sunday, February 16, throughout the National level mayor's office, where Citizen Participation will be vigilant with its delegates, in photo: Carlos Pimentel TODAY Duany Nuñez 12-2-2020

The eyes of the country, of international organizations and several countries of the world, will be on the municipal elections next Sunday in the Dominican Republic, with the presence in the electoral colleges of around 2000 observers.

The nonpartisan civic movement and Dominican chapter of Transparency International Citizen Participation (PC) have 1800 election observers ready for municipal elections next Sunday.

Carlos Pimentel, executive director of PC, also showed the monitoring center where they will receive information from the voting centers, where 80 technicians will work in two shifts.
He argued that these observers are in the voting centers developing itinerant work and reporting all electoral crimes and crimes that occur.

He points out that these observers have specific assignments so that each one has been assigned the task to be carried out and the moments in which he must report to the PC Operations Center, which is already ready for that work. Pimentel says that PC will offer two reports on election day: one at 1:00 in the afternoon, one in the morning, and another at 7:00 pm about the day’s developments and events.

On this occasion, he points out, PC will not develop a quick count, since this implies having a sample of each territory, which is not possible, because there are 333 locations.

All indications are that the observers will begin their work with the opening of the electoral colleges, then they will fulfill the routes established in a particular territory. Similarly, this staff will be in the schools at closing time, scheduled for 5 pm, after seeing the process of scrutiny and data transmission.

He points out that there are 16,000 schools throughout the country, so there will not be an observer for each one, hence the itinerant, which will move from one to another. “We will be present with a significant representation, which will allow us to have a quality report, objective, and an overview of what happened in the elections,” he emphasizes.

It relies on the quality and level of the observers, because they have undergone a rigorous training process, so what they see and report will be related to the country through the established mechanisms.

The Central Electoral Board (JCE) reported that a group of 118 international election observers from 20 countries would be present in the DR for the municipal general ordinary elections of February 16, 2020.
In this regard, the international electoral observation mission will be integrated by 40 representatives of the Inter-American Union of Electoral Organizations (UNIORE), 24 members of the Organization of American States (OAS).

Also, six members of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES); six members of the Council of Electoral Experts of Latin America (CEELA); 15 academics and experts; seven members of the Association of World Election Bodies; and 20 members of the diplomatic corps will participate.

At the same time, five representatives of the Central American Parliament and 21 guests of political parties will participate as international guests.

The countries that will accompany the Dominican Republic in this electoral process are Argentina, Belgium, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Republic from Korea, Uruguay and the United States of America.

Carlos Pimentel, executive director of PC, believes that complaints about pressure on employees to vote for certain parties, as well as centers for purchases and sales of ID cards and other electoral crimes, have to be investigated. It regrets that at the time of the elections, the Public Ministry does not have the Office of the Special Prosecutor to prosecute Electoral Crimes and Crimes.

He regrets that the attorney, Jean Alain Rodríguez, decided not to create that structure and instead replaced it with a training process that nobody knows when and where it was done.

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