Weekly Report - 04 June 2015 (WR-15-22)

Dominican President Danilo Medina will be able to stand for re-election in 2016. In theory, the big hurdle blocking Medina’s ambitions was a constitutional bar on consecutive re-election. In practice, however, everything hinged on the outcome of an internal power struggle within the ruling Partido de la Liberación Dominicana (PLD). Medina, comfortably the most popular politician in the Dominican Republic in the polls, managed to induce the party’s caudillo, former president Leonel Fernández (1996-2000; 2004-2012), who hankered after a fourth term in power, to back the amendment (and indirectly his re-election bid) in exchange for a number of concessions. Once an agreement within the PLD was reached on 28 May, the party used its domination of both chambers of congress to reform the constitution accordingly within days.

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