Santo Domingo.- Two senior leaders of the opposition PRD party on Thursday joined the chorus of its members who challenge its president Miguel Vargas Maldonado’s ability to head the entity and be its candidate for the next presidential election.

PRD vice president Luis Abinader said Vargas is “absolutely” responsible for his organization’s electoral defeat, and must assume the consequences pave the way for a new leadership which allows the PRD to reorient its strategy to become a real option for the Presidency in the 2012 election.

After noting that he has the moral authority to judge his party’s internal situation, because he traveled the entire country supporting their candidates, Abinader regretted that the electoral results are disastrous not only for the PRD, but also for Dominican democracy, since the ruling PLD party will control the designations in the Judicial Branch and the Accounts Chamber.

He said the PRD’s electoral failure was cast long before the elections, when the Vargas unilaterally decided to reach an agreement with president Leonel Fernandez to approve the new Constitution and head a “complacent” opposition,

For the ex Legal Adviser during the Presidency of Hipolito Mejia “it would be difficult (for the PRD) to win with Miguel Vargas in 2012,” referring to the next presidential electionsl.

Guido Gomez Mazara also challenged Vargas’s leadership in the PRD, and affirmed that the despite that party’s stunning defeat the embattled opposition leader will resist resignation. “To behave with dignity one has to be dignified.”