WASHINGTON, USA – At the invitation of the Central Electoral Board (JCE) of the Dominican Republic, the Organization of American States (OAS) will deploy an Electoral Observation Mission (EOM) to the July 5 special general presidential and legislative elections.
The Mission will be led by former Chilean president Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, who will attend the meetings virtually from Santiago de Chile due to travel restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The field mission will be led by the OAS secretary for the strengthening of democracy, Francisco Guerrero.
With the aim of comprehensively observing the process and taking into account the challenges posed by the global health situation, the Mission will implement an innovative approach that will combine the presence of experts and observers in the field with the use of virtual platforms to enable dialogue at a distance with those who participate in the process.
The Mission’s analysis will address central aspects of the process, such as electoral organization and technology, political financing, women’s political participation, and electoral justice.
During its stay, the Mission will meet with electoral authorities, government representatives, political parties, candidates, and representatives of civil society to learn about the preparations for the elections. It will also be present in the voting precincts on voting day. In turn, some of the experts who will be part of the Mission will carry out their work from their countries of origin, through virtual platforms that will allow them to meet with the main actors of the election and comprehensively analyze the technical aspects of the process.
Given the health context, a series of special measures have been planned for the care of the members of the Mission. In this sense, the Mission will comply with all the precautionary measures implemented by the government of the Dominican Republic regarding the coronavirus.
After observing the municipal elections held at the beginning of the year, this will be the eighteenth Electoral Observation Mission that the OAS has deployed in the Dominican Republic.
