DR: Congress Opens a New Legislature, Campaigns and Elections

February 27, 2024 Hour: 6:13 pm

This Tuesday, the two legislative chambers of the National Congress will open their new ordinary legislature, which will last until July 26 of this year. It will be the last of the current administration, which began on August 16, 2020.

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The period that will open this Tuesday comprises 150 days and is marked by the political campaigns and the presidential elections, which will be held right in the middle of the congressional work and, therefore, could affect the work of the legislators and the approval of hundreds of pending bills.

The opening of the legislatures is scheduled for 8:00 a.m. this Tuesday. There, Alfredo Pacheco and Ricardo de los Santos, presidents of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, will formally begin the legislative work and will designate the congressional commissions that will receive President Luis Abinader and the officials in the esplanade of the Congress.

Afterward, the congressional leaders will continue their joint sessions in the National Assembly hall, where the President of the Senate will introduce Abinader’s accountability speech.

The new legislature has a group of pending bills that must be approved before July 26 to prevent them from perishing.

De esta manera concluye este 27 de febrero, en la apertura de la Primera Legislatura Ordinaria 2024, el presidente Luis Abinader (@luisabinader), tal como lo establece la Constitución en su artículo 128, cumple con su deber y responsabilidad ante el pueblo dominicano ��.

El… pic.twitter.com/P1yFbbp5IM

— Cámara de Diputados de la República Dominicana (@DiputadosRD)
February 27, 2024

The tweet reads, “Thus concludes this February 27, at the opening of the First Ordinary Legislature 2024, President Luis Abinader, as established by the Constitution in Article 128, fulfills his duty and responsibility to the Dominican people . The Constitutional president highlighted that our country has advanced with a management full of energy and with high productivity rates in the various areas of our nation.”

The bills that will be relegated to the new congressional train that will be sworn in August are the social security reform, the Penal Code, the Telework law, the bill to limit political campaign expenses, the fiscal responsibility law, the bill to regulate the practice of baseball by minors and the teaching of English as a second language in public schools.

Other pending projects are the Hydrocarbons law, the law for the prevention of violence against women, the public procurement project or the civil service law.

The political campaign for the presidential and congressional elections will begin in March. Most deputies and senators are registered in their respective parties to repeat in their congressional positions for four more years, so they are obliged to combine their work in Congress with their political work.

The same thing happened at the beginning of this year, when the deputies immersed themselves in municipal campaign work to support the candidates of their localities or to promote themselves as mayoral aspirants, as did congressmen Betty Gerónimo, Nelson de la Rosa, Aquilino Serrata, Tulio Jiménez and Víctor Fadul.