Espinal and Pimentel argue that there are still no guarantees to hold elections on March 15

SANTO DOMINGO. - Of not presenting a report regarding what happened with the automated voting last 16 February, which caused the suspension of the municipal elections, there are no guarantees that him Winners will be announced in March can be celebrated New elections

The political scientist arrived at that conclusion Spinal Rosary and the executive director of Citizen Participation (PC), Carlos Pimentel, who, together with Rafael Toribio, coordinator of INTEC Dialogue for Action (DIA), performed an analysis on the suspended 2020 municipal elections. 

“The suspension or annulment of the elections highlights two things, one is the fracaso for the Central Electoral Board (JCE) because it is the body that should have organized a process and could not, and the other is that the automated voting is buried in the Dominican Republic and probably other countries that wanted to apply it, ”said Pimentel, who argued that no minimum guarantees for municipal elections of this March 15, cannot be guaranteed that hold presidential elections y congressmen el May 30.

“March has to guarantee elections that its results can have a minimum of confidence and legitimacy. To guarantee this, a set of circumstances must be given on the table that allows the results to be surrounded by that trust and credibility that the JCE does not have right now, ”Pimentel said.

The executive director of PC said that on March 15, two things will happen: either we stay the same, badly with an electoral crisis, or the crisis deepens. Espinal shares the same opinion and warned that there would be another crisis greater than the current one after the municipal electoral process, mainly due to the lack of cooperation between the political parties. 

When talking about the call for agreement that the business owner has requested, Spinal considered that after the suspension of the municipal elections the country has entered a chaos situation where there is no certainty of anything. "When all the actors have to do with the chaos, not because they have planned it, but because of the passing of the events they see what is happening to them, those calls of agreement become empty calls."

“The suspension of municipal elections marks the electoral process and paradoxically gives it an importance that it did not have, because this process was boring, unappetizing, problematic candidacies all, for one reason or another, these elections had no element of intensity, that negative factor introduced a dynamism, uncertainty and interest that we did not expect, ”said Espinal.

On your side, Rafael Toribio, day coordinator, indicated that the manifestation of the YOUNG should be interpreted as a way of participación y political responsibility, but "if that does not translate into votes on election day it does not happen to have been a diversion," he said.

He also said that the political landscape changed dramatically in recent weeks and what was only possible before is now more than likely.

In that sense, Espinal stated that, unlike the 1980s, that the protests were popular, currently the Protests they are headed by middle layers that they are economically well, but that they consider the country is not up to one democracia because it cannot guarantee an effective electoral process, because it cannot persecute the corrupt or it does not want, because there is no Justice, nor Public Ministry ...

Automated System Audit

The executive director of PC indicated that so far the JCE has not done, nor did an audit of the automated vote. "Although they call audit what they have done, the scope does not have those components," he said.

He also recalled that several political parties agreed with the implementation of automated voting in the primary election processes. 

Regarding this modality of election, Rafael Toribio, past rector of INTEC, said: “The automated vote failed and its defenders lose credibility. Automated voting has died, no matter if it was a technical failure or human interference. Nobody will think, at least in 50 years, talk about automated voting. ”

Toribio considered that with the frustrated choices passed the "Tollo theory" in which the JCE considered that it could solve the problem and in the end they could not do it. The professor considered that there could have been negligence across quality controls, which was taken advantage of.