Over the weekend, President Fernandez told the PLD party Central Committee that he was sticking with Rafael Alburquerque as his Veep. Today is the last day to register as a candidate for the office of President or Vice-President of the Dominican Republic. The PRD's Miguel Vargas and the Cuarta Via's Eduardo Estrella have yet to name their V-P choices, but are expected to do so today. Both Trajano Santana of the PRI party and Guillermo Moreno of MIUCA also have to reveal their ticket mates today. The registration process closes at midnight.
The country's Civil Registry offices will be overhauled this year, and the incumbents will have to re-qualify for the job. According to an announcement made by Central Electoral Board (JCE) magistrate Aura Celeste Fernandez, the entire system will be reviewed; all the applicants will be processed; and those who are chosen for the posts will enter into a civil service system. Aura Celeste Fernandez, famous for her leadership of the School for Judicial Personnel, is currently the lead educator for the National School for the Training of Civil Registry and Electoral Personnel. According to Fernandez, the new system will eliminate the slipshod work of the past and produce civic minded people who work for the people, and not for themselves.
The Central Electoral Board (JCE) has handed the political parties the database on the 124,688 people who will staff the polling stations on 16 May. The president of the JCE Administrative Chamber, Roberto Rosario, told reporters that 77,339 were female and 42,392 were male. The JCE goal was to garner 103,000 volunteers for election duty. Of the total there are 42,062 who have previous experience and 82,297 who are new to elections. Recruitment campaigns were held at most Dominican universities, and as a result there are 78,650 students among the election workers. The political parties can look over the database and make any objections that they feel pertinent.
The DR continues to take an active role in talks for peace and easing of regional tensions. Foreign Relations Minister Carlos Morales will preside over the 25th Consulting Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Relations of the Organization of American States that will take place today in Washington, D.C. The ministers will analyze the report presented by the special commission covering tension between Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela. Heads of state of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador had met in Santo Domingo for the Group of Rio gathering and agreed to move on. Meanwhile, Dominican Juan Luis Guerra participated in the Artists for Peace conference held at the border of Colombia and Venezuela, which was held to support friendship ties between Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Others participating in the event were Juanes, Alejandro Sanz, Ricardo Montaner, Juan Fernando Velasco, Carlos Vives and Miguel Bose.
According to the Central Bank, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was down just a fraction in February (0.03%) in relation to January. Inflation for the first two months of the year, according to the Central Bank, was just 1.06%. A major factor in the decrease in the index was a series of lower prices for food, drinks and tobacco, which is a third of the CPI. Rising prices of raw materials and fuels were offset by the lower prices for foodstuffs. The inflation rate from February 2007 to February 2008 was pegged at 8.68%.
The foreign debt of the Dominican Republic has grown by 18.3% during the current Fernandez administration. This contrasts sharply with the first (1996-2000) Leonel Fernandez administration, which saw a -3.3% reduction in the nation's foreign debt. The current figure is US$7.542 billion, up from US$6.379 billion in 2004. The report from the Ministry of the Hacienda says that it was during PRD administrations when the foreign debt went up the most, with Hipolito Mejia increasing the debt by 73% and Antonio Guzman (1978-1982) increasing the debt by a whopping 166%. Of course, those were different times. Nowadays, according to Listin Diario, the debt is split between multinational financial organizations (32%), bilateral loans (38%), bond issues (23%), commercial banks (about 6%) and foreign suppliers (0.2%). The more than 70% of the debt with multinational or bilateral lenders is seen as a positive, since these loans are for longer periods of time at lower interest rates. According to the article in Listin Diario, the fact that the President controls the Congress has aided the approval of many loans that would have been stymied in the former PRD-controlled congress of 1996-2000.
Private aviation does not get much play in the Dominican Republic, with less than 4,000 flights a year, according to Airport Authority chairman Andres Vanderhorst. The Bahamas get 69,000 small craft arrivals every year. According to reports in Listin Diario, the authority is submitting a decree for Presidential approval that would eliminate much of the red tape associated with landing a private plane in the Dominican Republic. One of the two main obstacles is the price of Avgas, now pegged at US$7 a gallon for piston-engine aircraft. The other is the absurd amount of fees collected from private plane owners, between US$400 and US$500 at any airport in the country. In contrast, the fees in Puerto Rico total just US$3, and help attract tens of thousands of flights from small, private aircraft owners.
The Ministry of the Environment has announced that the Seaboard Caribbean, the ship that spilled hundreds of gallons of fuel oil in Punta Caucedo, affecting beaches in Boca Chica, has paid the fines that were levied. The ship paid RD$7,095,314, according to the Diario Libre. The sum was divided between punitive damages and the cost of the clean up efforts as well as ecological damages. The Frederic Schad company, representing the ship's insurers, deposited the check together with a letter guaranteeing coverage of any ecological damages.
A press release from the Ministry of Industry and Commerce indicates that if the transport unions, especially the ones that transport hundreds of thousands of workers who flock to Santo Domingo on a daily basis, choose to increase their fares, the government will put an end to the subsidy on diesel fuel. The recent leap in oil prices on the world commodity markets has led to huge increases in gasoline and diesel prices in the Dominican Republic. The warning from the ministry says that the government will "take steps" in case the union leaders decide to put a halt to the on-going dialogue "and go down the road of strikes..."
The press release points out that the Ministry has provided 1.5 million gallons of diesel fuel in order to "ensure that the public is not affected by the rising costs of fuel." The following day, the El Caribe reported that the Unified Transport Union (CNTU), whose members include 1,900 vehicles that haul fruit and vegetables from Jarabacoa and Constanza, rejected the government threats, especially in view of the fact that the unions use in excess of three million gallons a month and the government is providing "a little more than a million". "Besides that," according to union leader Ramon Perez Figuereo, "we have all the freight haulers that supply the markets." Another union leader, Juan Hubieres, the bearded head of FENATRANO, told El Caribe reporters that he doubted that there would be fare hikes.
The guilty parties in the Renove fraud case are in custody, at least in theory. Pedro Franco Badia is under house arrest until 2011, and so is Alfredo Pulinario Linares (Cambita). Transport union czars Antonio Marte and Blas Peralta were sent to Najayo Prison in San Cristobal, but a few hours later they were transferred to high-priced private medical facilities in Santo Domingo for "treatment of health problems", according to Diario Libre.
Minority party presidential candidate Guillermo Moreno criticized that the state prosecutors and the Central Electoral Board (JCE) have not acted to restrain the continuing practice of political patronage. "How is it possible that in the country there is not respect for the law and that a political party can use the national budget to pay its payroll and the Central Electoral Board does not put a stop to the practice," the former district attorney reproached. Interviewed on Uno + Uno TV talk show, Moreno said that political patronage seems to be ingrained in the Dominican culture with yet to there be the penalizing of a political party that makes undue use of government resources. He criticized that the government has made use of the budget to finance political vagrants while poverty increases in the country. He said his party, MIUCA, seeks to bring about a change in the handling of the political culture in the country.
Adriano Miguel Tejada, executive editor of Diario Libre, pinpoints the need for more governmental emphasis in basic education when highlighting that many of the weaknesses of Dominican society today are due to a lack of priority of education in the governmental budget. "Those that still doubt the impact a deficit in funding for education has on the Dominican society should ask themselves the reasons behind the poor conduct of public transport drivers on the streets, the terrible behavior of so many people in our society, and the poor grade we are receiving in almost all aspects of life," he writes today. "They should also ask about the impact that low levels of education is having on domestic help, on the low skills of workers and on how many people learn to read and write just to be taken off the lists of illiteracy, but nothing more."
"They also should find out the cost of ignorance in a country that wants to compete selling high quality products in international markets or receiving tourists that demand high levels of service," he writes. "Thus it is so lowly to pretend to justify the unnecessary spending on other "priorities" for resources that should be invested in education," he writes.
He concludes that better educated young girls would get pregnant latter. Better prepared youths would have a different vision of life. And a better prepared society would be more aware of its challenges and possibilities. A more aware society would not rid us of a dictatorship, but it would make more difficult the task of those who want to keep a hold on power and citizens would be more energetic in their rejection of abuses. In a population with characteristics such as ours, the only way to invest less in education of the future is to invest more now. That cannot be postponed any longer," he writes.
The United States Army has announced this year's joint military exercises, called Operation Tradewind, which will take place in the Dominican Republic and continue until mid April. The news was reported on Nuria Piera and Huchi Lora's CDN Radio show. An interesting facet of the announcement was the fact that it was made by Lt. Col. Lissette Brown Tejeda, US Army. The colonel was born to Dominican parents in Puerto Rico and is currently assigned to the Support Command. She is also the granddaughter of Dominican military officials and the niece of several retired generals. Brown Tejeda told the reporters that personnel from several Caribbean countries, including Antigua, Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, and Jamaica were taking part in the exercises that are just getting under way. According to the colonel, the exercises will be carried out on Dominican military bases, including Las Calderas in Bani, and San Isidro.
The ghosts of Tropical Storms Olga and Noel are still haunting the area around San Jose de Ocoa, and can be witnessed by all. There are still communities that are cut off from the main roads, the country roads are still damaged, the main highway is in a precarious condition, and the farmers are suffering the lack of government assistance to replant their harvests. According to Hoy reporter Adalberto de la Rosa, the inhabitants of the province feel that they have been forgotten, since the equipment that was sent to rebuild the highway to the main crossroads was withdrawn after just starting work and has yet to return to the project. Local politicians say that communities like El Pinal, Las Espinas and Los Chivos are still cut off from the rest of the province. According to the reporter, the whole community is feeling the loss of the late Father Luis Quinn, since the priest was able to mobilize both local and international assistance for the development of his province.
More than 5000 youngsters have volunteered for the Civil Defense Operation "Holy Week Reflection 2008" which begins this Thursday (20 March) and ends on Easter Sunday (23 March). The volunteers, mostly young people between the ages of 18 and 35 have to face many hardships in order to help people in need. The Civil Defense office is the lead organization of the Emergency Operations Center (COE), which together with 21 other institutions helps out in local or national emergencies. All told, the COE will have 31,000 people staffing the 2,125 aid stations throughout the country. The aim, this year, is to reduce the death toll on the country's highways. Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death on the holiday weekends, and most of the dead are young people between the ages of 18 and 39, according to Hoy newspaper. The COE will have two mobile hospitals on duty; one in Boca Chica and one at La Cumbre on the Duarte Highway. Drinking and driving was cited as a major cause of the fatal accidents. Among other measures, large trucks are banned from the highways beginning at 6am on Thursday, and trucks that supply food and fuel will have to request permission to travel. Any animal near a highway will be removed by the authorities. Motorcyclists and pickup trucks with people in the back will be stopped by AMET, National Police or Civil Defense agents. All swimmers will be asked to leave the water at 6pm. Drivers caught drinking and driving will face the seizure of the vehicle and fines.
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