As things go, we may have the hottest long summer in the last 10 years. Trouble is beginning to brew in the barrios. Thousands of tires and mattresses are being brought in by "cabezas calientes" who are using "apagones" as their excuse to start riots. Many of the "strikes" begin with a group of wise guys who grab a hot corner in a barrio and start stopping all cars to collect money for gasoline to burn tires. yet most of this money is for their own pocket. Those who dont pay will get their car windows smashed.
Hippo and his PPH people are now in state of alarm with their chances for reelection being slim and none. Blackouts will stay on for the next three months for as much as 12 hours a day on the average. Gasoline will hit $80 pesos by August unless the FMI changes the "confidence melt" on El Burro. No one, even his followers, have any confidence on the burro man. His big mouth will not stop and the dollar will not go down.
The crisis is such, that even with hotels at capacity, a record amount of transfers from the USA by Dominicans and a flourishing Free Trade Zone, Hippo has managed to spend it all in "botellas" and and debt payment. This idiot just does not learn. He is hiring ghost employees at a rate of 120 a day at about an average salary of $10,000 a month each. He believes that hiring more people will get him votes to beat Leonel. But no matter how much he spends, he cannot reach the balancing limit of about 1,000,000 government salaried people to offset the Leonel factor.
Right now Hippo has close to 500,000 on the payroll and under the table payments, not enough to attract enough votes to beat Leonel. Worst of it all, he is firing patronage employees belonging to his own party leaders opposing him for reelection, thus creating a huge backlash. New employees being hired are not "hard votes". Leonel got a whopping 370,000 in his own party primaries for 88% of the vote. This is scary. His party has never scored this much on a primary.
The money is on Hippo desisting from running right now. His popularity has declined even within his own PPH group. His PPH group is divided now into two camps. One who wants him and another group that wants to negotiate with the other candidates for an "honorable exit" and run nervous wreck Fello Suverbi, who may just be as crazy as El Burro. If you think Hippo is weird, just wait for Fello. This guy is just as stupid.
Hippo has even ordered his military chiefs to scare off the population with political statements supporting El Burro. But no one is scared of the military brass anymore, because the military is as divided as the population on their political preferences. Every candidate has their "generals" on the take and Hippos chiefs will be retired on May 17 by Leonel or whoever the next president will be. The military cleanup will be such that as many as 100 top officers will be fired or retired. People like Soto Jimenez, General Zorrilla and General Diaz Morfa are almost history. They should get as much as they can before they are turned into "retiree monthly check eaters".
More stores, industries, small businesses, malls and banks will be closing at a record pace. As of this writing franchises like KFC, MacDonalds, Burger King are having trouble. Car dealers are not selling. Five major dealers I know have not sold 5 cars in June 2003 between them. They are borrowing just to keep a skeleton staff, but cannot keep up with their payments. Many are "liquidating" their employees, then hiring a small group for 3 months, before deciding to close down.
Baninter business assets have lost their value thanks to the stupidity of Hippos appointed administrators at Baninter, Listin Diario, Telecentro, Aster and other businesses that were supposed to be sold to recover the Baninter losses. The people he has appointed have fired all the valuable personnel and many star shows at TV and radio stations are quiting and negotiating deals in the competition. RNN News has no value other than the equipment. Listin Diario has only one asset...its printing press. Telecentro has not paid their staff in weeks and a major rebellion is going on. Freddy Beras, Nuria, tania Baez and others are threatening to leave because of the repression . Besides, legal tangles surround these businesses. Only a mad person would dare invest in these white elephants.
The result is we have to pay for the mistakes made by El Burro. But he will pay with riots, unstability and financial chaos. The Pan Am Games will be the final burial ground for El Burro. These games will be such a fiasco, that Baninter and the FMI may be forgotten. It will be a miracle if one gets to see 10 world class athletes at these games. Athletes will be so exhausted from heat by 9:00am they may not recover to compete. Many will get sick from the bad water and food cooked under unhealthy conditions. I feel sorry for the Americans and the Canadians who are not used to this. The Cubans, Haitians, venezuelans and Jamaicans should feel quite at home. Just drive by Palacio de Los Deportes and watch the lousy paint job, the lack of grass and the slowness of the work and you can see what I mean by a fiasco. The highway directing traffic to the Pan Am villa has now being stopped for lack of funds. Las Americas Highway, as I predicted will carry all the traffic. This will be the greatest traffic jam in history as AMET and the security group handling the games will create more of a chaos than the drivers themselves. General Jorge, the security chief, has absolutely no experience at this. I dont even know how this guy qualified for the army with less than 5 ft. tall.
We may even be touched by a hurricane or two before the year is over, and who knows, Hippo is such a bad omen, we may get an earthquake. What else can go wrong?
TW
Hippo and his PPH people are now in state of alarm with their chances for reelection being slim and none. Blackouts will stay on for the next three months for as much as 12 hours a day on the average. Gasoline will hit $80 pesos by August unless the FMI changes the "confidence melt" on El Burro. No one, even his followers, have any confidence on the burro man. His big mouth will not stop and the dollar will not go down.
The crisis is such, that even with hotels at capacity, a record amount of transfers from the USA by Dominicans and a flourishing Free Trade Zone, Hippo has managed to spend it all in "botellas" and and debt payment. This idiot just does not learn. He is hiring ghost employees at a rate of 120 a day at about an average salary of $10,000 a month each. He believes that hiring more people will get him votes to beat Leonel. But no matter how much he spends, he cannot reach the balancing limit of about 1,000,000 government salaried people to offset the Leonel factor.
Right now Hippo has close to 500,000 on the payroll and under the table payments, not enough to attract enough votes to beat Leonel. Worst of it all, he is firing patronage employees belonging to his own party leaders opposing him for reelection, thus creating a huge backlash. New employees being hired are not "hard votes". Leonel got a whopping 370,000 in his own party primaries for 88% of the vote. This is scary. His party has never scored this much on a primary.
The money is on Hippo desisting from running right now. His popularity has declined even within his own PPH group. His PPH group is divided now into two camps. One who wants him and another group that wants to negotiate with the other candidates for an "honorable exit" and run nervous wreck Fello Suverbi, who may just be as crazy as El Burro. If you think Hippo is weird, just wait for Fello. This guy is just as stupid.
Hippo has even ordered his military chiefs to scare off the population with political statements supporting El Burro. But no one is scared of the military brass anymore, because the military is as divided as the population on their political preferences. Every candidate has their "generals" on the take and Hippos chiefs will be retired on May 17 by Leonel or whoever the next president will be. The military cleanup will be such that as many as 100 top officers will be fired or retired. People like Soto Jimenez, General Zorrilla and General Diaz Morfa are almost history. They should get as much as they can before they are turned into "retiree monthly check eaters".
More stores, industries, small businesses, malls and banks will be closing at a record pace. As of this writing franchises like KFC, MacDonalds, Burger King are having trouble. Car dealers are not selling. Five major dealers I know have not sold 5 cars in June 2003 between them. They are borrowing just to keep a skeleton staff, but cannot keep up with their payments. Many are "liquidating" their employees, then hiring a small group for 3 months, before deciding to close down.
Baninter business assets have lost their value thanks to the stupidity of Hippos appointed administrators at Baninter, Listin Diario, Telecentro, Aster and other businesses that were supposed to be sold to recover the Baninter losses. The people he has appointed have fired all the valuable personnel and many star shows at TV and radio stations are quiting and negotiating deals in the competition. RNN News has no value other than the equipment. Listin Diario has only one asset...its printing press. Telecentro has not paid their staff in weeks and a major rebellion is going on. Freddy Beras, Nuria, tania Baez and others are threatening to leave because of the repression . Besides, legal tangles surround these businesses. Only a mad person would dare invest in these white elephants.
The result is we have to pay for the mistakes made by El Burro. But he will pay with riots, unstability and financial chaos. The Pan Am Games will be the final burial ground for El Burro. These games will be such a fiasco, that Baninter and the FMI may be forgotten. It will be a miracle if one gets to see 10 world class athletes at these games. Athletes will be so exhausted from heat by 9:00am they may not recover to compete. Many will get sick from the bad water and food cooked under unhealthy conditions. I feel sorry for the Americans and the Canadians who are not used to this. The Cubans, Haitians, venezuelans and Jamaicans should feel quite at home. Just drive by Palacio de Los Deportes and watch the lousy paint job, the lack of grass and the slowness of the work and you can see what I mean by a fiasco. The highway directing traffic to the Pan Am villa has now being stopped for lack of funds. Las Americas Highway, as I predicted will carry all the traffic. This will be the greatest traffic jam in history as AMET and the security group handling the games will create more of a chaos than the drivers themselves. General Jorge, the security chief, has absolutely no experience at this. I dont even know how this guy qualified for the army with less than 5 ft. tall.
We may even be touched by a hurricane or two before the year is over, and who knows, Hippo is such a bad omen, we may get an earthquake. What else can go wrong?
TW
