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Daily News - 17 January 2000
New airport for Santiago and Moca
The Fernández administration authorized the construction of the Aeropuerto Internacional del Cibao by a private sector group. Santiago businessmen will be investing US$30 million in the airport that will go up in Licey al Medio, in the province of Santiago. A high tech industrial park will be built next to the new airport. Angel Rosario, president of the Asociación de Empresarios de la Región Norte, made the announcement at the National Palace following a meeting with the President. Businessmen Poppy Bermúdez, Mario Cáceres, Felix García and José Clase accompanied him. The airport was authorized by way of a Civil Aviation Board resolution. The Santiago business sector had requested the construction of the airport for years, but the government has not been willing to fund the construction. Thus, the private sector has said it will build the airport. Construction is slated to begin in late February or early March. The airport promoters says the site places it 10 minutes either from Santiago or from Moca. The airport will thus serve both passenger and cargo needs of the Cibao area that today have to travel more than an hour to Puerto Plata to use the Gregorio Luperón International Airport.
Terra Networks to set up operations in Santo Domingo
Europe's biggest Internet unit, Terra Networks announced it will be setting up operations in the Santo Domingo Cyberpark. The first phase of the high tech park, that is located near Las Americas International Airport, is slated to be operational by August of this year. Jean Perea Saenz, chief executive of Terra, and Dominican Rafael Bonelly Ricart, content director, announced the company's intent of consolidating in the DR an Internet center that will serve Latin America. The company has plans to invest more than US$2 million in the project.
Terra Networks is the top Spanish-speaking access/content provider operating in Latin America and the Iberian peninsula. It is the Internet unit of Telefónica, Spain's largest telecoms group that began trading on the Nasdaq in November 1999. Merrill Lynch describes the company as "a must own in European Internet basket."
The company is big news in Europe today. Terra Networks will enter Spain's Ibex index of the 35 most-traded stocks, the Spanish bourse society just announced on Friday, 14 January.
Terra provides Internet access and services and has agreements with a number of big Spanish companies like computer reservations system Amadeus, the country's biggest department store El Corte Inglés and bank BBVA, to be formed this month when BBV and Argentaria complete their merger.
Balaguer accepts to run for the PRSC
As expected, former President Joaquín Balaguer, who is 93 years old, physically impaired and blind, accepted his unanimous proclamation as the Partido Reformista Social Cristiano's candidate in the May 2000 election. His running for President is a strategic and symbolic move. The PRSC leader is in an excellent position to negotiate what he wants from the two leading political parties that covet his vote to win the Presidency.
Polls indicate he does not have enough votes to reach the Presidency. But he does command enough to decide who will be the next President of the DR, either in the first round or the second round, that would be held 30 June in the likely scenario that none of the contenders achieve the 50%+1 of the vote necessary to win the presidency in the first round.
At the PRSC convention, 2,975 delegates raised their hands in favor of Balaguer as presidential candidate. At the last minute, former Vice President Jacinto Peynado declined his candidacy. During the convention, PRSC delegates booed the attending ruling party Partido de la Liberación Dominicana delegates (Alejandrina Germán, Euclides Gutiérrez and Miguel Cocco), and applauded the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano delegates (Hatuey de Camps, Tony Raful, Rafael Suberví, Peggy Cabral, Rafael Gamundi, Eligio Jáquez, Fausto Liz and Virgilio Bello). The PLD reached power in 1996 when Balaguer endorsed the candidacy of PLD contender, today President Leonel Fernández. The PRD won several congressional and municipal positions when Balaguer provided his support in the 1998 congressional and municipal election.
Balaguer's acceptance speech
Balaguer arrived at 11:55 am to the San Carlos Club where the PRSC Assembly was held. Shortly after, he was unanimously proclaimed to run for President. This will be the ninth time he runs for the Partido Reformista since that party was created in 1964. His speech was interrupted on several occasions by his enthusiastic followers. His words were as follows:
"I must begin my words welcoming the foreigners that honor us with their visit. As Dominican and Reformista we are highly pleased and proud of the testimonial of solidarity that these illustrious representatives offer, true representatives of the democratic culture of our days.
"I would like to thank, in my own name and that of the Partido Reformista, the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano and the Partido de la Liberación Dominicana for having appointed commissions to this national extraordinary assembly.
"I do not think it is necessary that I stop and present the Partido Reformista government program that I would implement if I am favored by the majority vote in the next election as the country is aware of our programs through more than 20 years of government; but I would like to thank with my spirit, with all my heart the solemn commitment placed upon my shoulders by the members of this assembly and the PRSC.
"I would like to express my most profound gratitude to the conventioneers present here and ensure them that within my physical possibilities, already diminished, I will do what is necessary, to make this nation an every day more fair one for all.
"I will do all within my reach to convert the Dominican people into an everyday less poor people for its children. May I leave you all then with the historic words, Reformista: The luck is cast. Move ahead, move ahead Reformistas, at winners' pace."
PRD presidential candidate has praise for Balaguer
Politics is politics. While in 1996 Partido Revolucionario Dominicano politicians had acrid words for the PRSC and its leader Joaquín Balaguer, today all is sweetness. At that time, the PLD allied with Balaguer, an alliance that provided enough votes for Fernández to reach the presidency. Today, Hipólito Mejía, presidential candidate for the PRD in a televised interview immediately after Balaguer accepted the PRSC nomination said: "I celebrate that activity (the assembly). I will be, and expect to be, a faithful friend of the PRSC and Dominicans. I am happy that all comes out well because I have seen that that friend and brother party has contributed so that Dominican democracy consolidates itself each time more."
Mejía said that the PRD has planted love and trust, offering to Dr. Balaguer on his behalf and that of the party, a serious attitude, a sincere attitude, in the interest of directing the country in harmony, peace and tranquility.
Balaguer invites PLD delegates to his house
Just hours after Balaguer was proclaimed presidential candidate of the PRSC, a high level commission of the PLD visited the former statesman at his residence. José Tomás Pérez, secretary general said the PLD political mission was invited following the booing of the PLD delegation at the PRSC assembly. Miguel Cocco, director of Customs who attended the assembly and then was invited to Balaguer's residence said that the booing at the convention does not bother them. "What is important is the relationship with the leader of the party," he said.
Campaign weekends
Hipólito Mejía, presidential candidate of the PRD, presided over a mega caravan that started in the Avenida Duarte and Pedro Livio Cedeño and continued on to the Santo Domingo Malecón on Sunday, a day after the PRSC proclaimed their presidential candidate. The showing of force also took place simultaneously in the cities of Santiago, San Pedro de Macorís, San Francisco de Macorís and Barahona.
Meanwhile, Danilo Medina, presidential candidate for the PLD, returned on Sunday from his tour of Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, and Miami in the US. Medina was received by thousands of his followers.
Nuclear waste ship clears the Caribbean en route to Japan
Dubbed as a "floating Chernobyl," the Swan Pacific ship with the largest shipment ever of vitrified high level nuclear wastes (resulting from plutonium reprocessing) successfully made it through the Caribbean on its way to the Panama Canal. The British-flagged ship "Pacific Swan" has on board 104 canisters of the toxic wastes that is on its way from the French plutonium reprocessing factory of La Hague, in Normandy, to northern Japan. The high level waste onboard the Pacific Swan contains the same amount of radioactivity as that released from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, according to Greenpeace, that is contrary to the transporting of the wastes.
The wastes were slated to pass today through the Panama Canal. Local ecological groups, with the support of Greenpeace want the Caribbean governments to ban the passing of the ship, and others that are expected to follow through the Caribbean. In the possible case of a spill, the economy of the Caribbean would be devastated.
Greenpeace reports that in the summer of this year (1999), the first shipment of plutonium fuel was made to Japan from the plutonium factories of Sellafield in the UK and La Hague in France on the Pacific Swan's sister ships, the Pacific Teal and the Pacific Pintail. Whilst the shipment was enroute via the Cape of Good Hope and the Tasman Sea, a major scandal broke about nuclear data crucial to the fuel's safety being deliberately falsified by workers at Sellafield.
Subsequently fears for the fuel's safety has led to a cancellation of its loading into a Japanese nuclear reactor. As the plutonium fuel shipment arrived in Japan, the country experienced its worst nuclear accident in a facility linked to the Japanese plutonium industry. So far well over one hundred people have been exposed to large amounts of radiation and one worker recently died from his radiation exposure. The accident and the data falsification scandal have destroyed public confidence in the Japanese and European plutonium industries.
"As the New Millennium arrives, the plutonium industry is again risking the lives of millions of people and the global environment with their lethal shipment of nuclear high level waste", said Simon Boxer, Nuclear Campaigner for Greenpeace International. "Given the recent nuclear accident in Japan and the scandal of falsification of nuclear safety data of the plutonium fuel within the latest shipment, nations along the transport routes can have no faith in the ability of the plutonium industry to transport this nuclear waste safely. The plutonium industries of France, UK and Japan have been totally discredited and shown to be untrustworthy. With a passing of a new century the world community should end the nuclear industry as a failure of the last century." The Pacific Swan shipment is the largest shipment to date and is part of a program to transport some 3000 canisters of vitrified high level waste from France and the UK to Japan. In addition to high level waste shipments, France and UK have plans to make up to 80 shipments of plutonium fuel to Japan over the next ten years.
Past research has shown that if a high level waste shipment was involved in a serious maritime accident involving fire, the intensity and duration of ship fires could lead to a rupture of the shipping containers used to transport the waste. Such an accident could lead to an environmental disaster on the scale of Chernobyl. As has been shown by the oil slick hitting the coast of Brittany (France) from the sinking of the Erika, the environmental consequences of ship accidents at sea can be catastrophic for coastal communities. The governments of France, UK and Japan have not conducted any international Environmental Impact Assessment of the risks and consequences of their nuclear waste and plutonium shipments and have not consulted the nations who are at risk along the various transport routes.
Alvaro Carta passes away
Alvaro L. Carta, who created together with Charles Bluhdorn and fellow Cuban Teobaldo Rosell the Casa de Campo/Central Romana tourism and agroindustrial Gulf & Western Americas projects of today passed away on Friday, 14 January in West Palm Beach. He was buried in Vero Beach, Florida where he lived after the Central Romana and Costa Sur facilities were sold.
Baseball playoffs
Playoffs (round robin) standings as of Sunday, 16 January 2000
Aguilas 7-6 (.538)
Estrellas 7-6 (.538)
Leones 7-6 (.538)
Tigres 5-8 (.385) ­2 games

Remaining round robin games to choose the contenders for the finals are:

Tuesday, 18 January, 8 pm
Santo Domingo: Aguilas vs. Licey
San Pedro de Macorís: Estrellas vs. Escogido

Wednesday, 19 January, 8 pm
Santo Domingo: Estrellas vs. Licey
Santiago: Escogido vs. Aguilas

Thursday, 20 January, 8 pm
Santo Domingo: Escogido vs. Licey
San Pedro: Aguilas vs. Estrellas
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