
The July pact between the Socialists and Democrats on the lists raised many questions about how many deputies would be the mayors' preferences and how many would be the citizens'. The dilemma was put to rest by the Central Election Commission, which has calculated the distribution of mandates in open and closed lists in the country's 12 regions.
According to the formula that will be applied for the first time in the spring elections, the first 46 deputies of each competing entity will be the product of a closed list where the ranking has been determined by the president, while only parties that manage to obtain a number of mandates that exceeds the closed list will have the opportunity to send deputies to the Assembly as a citizen's preference.
For the May 11 parliamentary elections, political parties must find 186 candidates, as although 140 seats in Parliament are being contested, the division of the candidate list into two parts, one fixed and the other open, forces competing entities to present more names.
According to the CEC draft decision that Top Channel has, it is expected that political parties will present a list divided into two parts, where 46 will be in the closed part and 140 in the open part, where every vote will be contested./TCH