The president of the Central Electoral Board (JCE), Román Jáquez Liranzo, has reported that political parties will begin receiving the economic benefits provided by the state from next week.
Jáquez explained that an agreement was reached with the Ministry of Finance to resolve the impasse that arose over the amount of money that the parties should receive and that the political organizations receive the total of RD $ 1,260 MM and not half of ‘these.
“This week the Minister of Finance sent a communication to the Directorate General of Budget to be credited with the 630 million pesos as the budget for the first half and so it was done and on Friday we were credited with half for the first six months. From next week we will start with the distribution, in accordance with our statutes, “said Jáquez Liranzo when interviewed by journalist Adolfo Salomó on the program Veridades a l’Aire that CDN channel 37 is transmitted.
He added that the remaining RD $ 630 million, for the second half, they will be accredited by means of a complementary budget in the month of August and that this was the “solution” that they found and that the same was agreed with the political parties.
These statements come after earlier this week, the budget director told the DIARI guide that each month he has been delivering the shares in installments to the Central Electoral Board (JCE), a dozen of the 630,200,000, which it belongs to the parties and that is why it “does not understand” the reason why the electoral body has not distributed the economic resources to the political organizations.
“It’s that they haven’t deposited a single peso, because what the Board is telling you is that they’re not going to accept an amount that wasn’t set out in the Act,” Dante concluded.
The broken down budget that appears on the Digepres page provides for the delivery of RD $ 630.2 million to political organizations, while the other half appears with the category of “not applicable”.
The Executive Branch initially arranged for the allocation of 1.260 million pesos to be distributed among political parties, but in October last year the President of the Republic, Luis Abinader announced that he would propose to the National Congress to reduce 50% of the share received by political parties, as this year was not an election and so would use these resources for the construction of the extension of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD) in the municipality of Santo Domingo this but that this would be done with the consensus of the political parties and the JCE.
In late January, the full JCE sent a letter to the Directorate General of Budget requesting the full release of these resources, to which the government institution replied that they did not have the “power” to do it.
Several days later, the Administrative Minister of the Presidency, José Ignacio Pallissa said that the Government will accept the request of the Central Electoral Board to keep without cuts the distribution of funds of political parties and would not enter into dispute with these.
Law 33-2018 on political parties, groupings and movements, establishes that 80% of the resources allocated by the Executive Branch to be distributed among political parties will be redistributed in equal parts among parties that exceed 5% of the vote in the last choice.