The candidate for the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), Abel Martínez, described the RD Rescue alliance as a negative experience for his organization and held that, rather than a rescue, it ended up being a “RD hangover,” due to the way it was conceived and negotiated.
Martínez stated that the agreement was “mismade and misstructured” and said that the PLD and its candidates at the different levels of election were the main ones that were affected by the way the negotiations were conducted.
“The RD Rescue Alliance, more than a rescue, was an RD hangover. It was a mismade, misstructured alliance, where the Dominican Liberation Party and its candidates at all levels were the victims of that misnegotiation,” he said.
During a meeting with militants and community members from the La Otra Banda sector, he called on his party and the People's Force to ensure that, if in the future an electoral alliance is envisaged, either at one of the levels of election or in the face of a possible second round, the talks are held directly between the two political organizations.
In that regard, Martínez considered that the majority parties should take the lead in any possible agreement and prevent negotiations from being arbitrary by minority organizations, as he said had been in the past electoral process.
“I call on the PLD, which is my party, and the People's Force, to have some kind of alliance at any level or for a second round, as we have suggested, that negotiation is made directly between the majority parties, not arbitrated by a minority party as it happened in the past electoral process,” he said.
Martínez attributed to the way in which this negotiation took place some of the electoral losses experienced by the PLD, both in the National Congress and in the municipal governments.
“It was precisely because of the way in which this negotiation was conducted that the PLD lost senators, lost deputies and lost many mayors throughout the national territory,” he said.
“If the minority parties want to join that great main agreement, welcome are excellent, but they cannot be the ones who run an alliance between two majority parties that should have the maturity, the sensibility and the political strategy to sit directly,” he said.
Martínez insisted that any future understanding between the PLD and the People's Force should be based on direct negotiation, with clear rules and a common strategy, so that the agreements are in the interests of the political organizations involved and, in particular, avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
