In the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo, a high-stakes cross-party gathering is set to take place Thursday evening, bringing top government officials together with former head of state Leonel Fernández and senior leadership of the opposition People’s Force party. The core purpose of the closed-door meeting, hosted at the Global Democracy and Development Foundation starting at 6:00 p.m., is to outline the full parameters of President Luis Abinader’s national preparedness initiative, which has been developed to shield the country from fallout linked to escalating international tensions between the United States, Israel, and Iran.
The official government delegation will be led by José Ignacio Paliza, Minister of the Presidency, and will include two senior advisors, Magín Díaz and Eduardo Sanz Lovatón. Details of the planned consultation were officially verified by Omar Fernández, spokesman for former president Leonel Fernández, confirming that both government technical experts and opposition policy specialists will participate in the discussion.
This cross-sector dialogue forms a central pillar of the Abinader administration’s broader strategy to build unified national consensus around risk mitigation. The government is working to shore up domestic resilience ahead of any potential economic and social shocks that could ripple out from the worsening geopolitical standoff in the Middle East. Prior to this meeting, administration officials already held an identical consultation session with another former Dominican president, Danilo Medina, and key representatives from the Dominican Liberation Party, one of the country’s largest opposition blocs. The ongoing series of conversations reflects a deliberate push to include all major political, economic, and social stakeholder groups in national preparedness planning, rather than advancing policy unilaterally.