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These are the best-known faces, although, as many leaders, such as former deputy Orlando Jorge Villegas, recognize, in our political history there are many figures who "did not seem predestined to hold power", because "power does not always reward the most prepared or visible, but those who manage to connect with the circumstances in an unexpected way".
Now, the PRM must do the most difficult thing: reinvent itself without breaking. The citizenry, especially the PRM members, expect these "visible" actors to think more about the party than their own ambitions. It is not necessary to look to other countries to understand that the replacements within the ruling parties are usually minefields. Our own history, the one that many politicians pretend to forget, is populated with poorly managed transitions that ended in fractures, defections, and, in the end, defeats. The PLD, which believed itself invincible, is the most recent and most cautionary example. In another context, one of the PRM's "presidential candidates" would be pointed at and anointed without further ado. But we are not in times of caudillos, at least that is what is thought in the PRM, which prides itself on being democratic. And the worst thing the leadership could do is force a replacement without consensus, repeating the PLD's mistake when Danilism did everything possible to bury Leonel Fernández and thus impose Danilo's dauphin. The rest is well-known history. The same history punished that blunder with humiliation at the polls in 2020, and in 2024 that ordeal continued. So, who will be Abinader's heir? And what conditions should they meet to prevent power from slipping away from the PRM like water between their fingers? In her book "The Politics of Succession in Charismatic Movements," published online by the University of Cambridge, Caitlin Andrews-Lee warns that leaders who survive their founders are not necessarily the most loyal, but the most astute. The author proposes three conditions for success: that the new leader emerges as a political entrepreneur, not as a designated heir; that they take advantage of crises to legitimize themselves as a figure of salvation; and that they know how to appropriate the founder's style, not to copy it, but to transmit emotional continuity. Although a crisis scenario is not apparent in the PRM, so far, these keys are applicable, and even more so in an organization that seeks the path of permanence in power. Various modern authors have insisted that any replacement process must be perceived as fair, open, and competitive.
But more than anything, the succession of leadership and who holds it, must have a strong moral and ethical foundation.
If the PRM aspires to remain in power beyond 2028, it must choose not only a viable candidate, but also a legitimate one with ethical and moral principles in the eyes of its membership and the country.
The biggest challenge would be: choosing between the risk of imposing, the danger of dividing, and the need to inspire.
In that tension, the political destiny of the ruling party will be played out. Because there is nothing more fragile than a party in power without clear leadership, and everyone believing themselves to be the chosen ones… or the Prince (of Machiavelli). And there is nothing more dangerous than underestimating others. Let those who once believed that Abinader would not arrive or that he was a “tayota”, even within the same party, say so.
