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NewsWhore
08-13-2008, 02:50 PM
The President proposes, but legislators will have the last word, maybe. On his afternoon CDN talk show, journalist Huchi Lora says so far, the PLD-majority Congress has just served to stamp bills coming from the President. Yesterday, the PLD political committee recently agreed that President Leonel Fernandez would decide on whether the constitutional ban on his and former President Hipolito Mejia running again would be kept.
Now the Chamber of Deputies says that they agree to remove the "never again" clause on presidential re-election from Article 49 of the Constitution. This article refers to a President serving more than two consecutive terms.
According to El Caribe, Chamber president Julio Cesar Valentin favors that again presidential and the congressional and municipal election be held in the same year. He said this would mean either a reduction to two years of the next term, or an extension of the present term. Congressional and municipal elections are set for 2010.
Valentin is also a strong supporter that the number of deputies be reduced from 172 to 120.
Valentin said that the resolutions approved by the PLD Political Committee are slightly different from those submitted by the special commission that was created to draft the reform proposals. The PLD already has the two-thirds majority needed to change the Constitution. Valentin thinks that the PRD party, currently in the opposition, will support the changes because "tomorrow they could win the election."

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