| Daily News - 26 November 2003 |
The Listin Diario reports that the District Attorney for the National District (Santo Domingo) has instructed his team to arrest any men found to have abused or beaten their partners. These orders circumvent the new rules that require a judge's warrant to make an arrest. Women's groups had protested that the new legalities would expose wives to more family violence. Attorney General Victor Cespedes Martinez ordered the district attorneys and police officers to handle all complaints of family violence by arresting the aggressors without need for a judge's arrest warrant, because in these cases there is flagrant evidence and an arrest is the appropriate action. The new Penal Code has been sharply criticized by many jurists, including Blas Santana, the department director for the UTESA Law School. Santana told reporters from La Informacion in Santiago that there is a strong possibility the application of the new code could provoke what he called "extra-judicial deaths," referring to possible police excesses. When the Attorney General dictated that no arrests were to be made without a judicial arrest warrant, the department that handles children's affairs felt an increase in the abuse suffered by women and children would be provoked. District Attorney Aristy Caraballo pointed out to reporters that there are exceptions to the rule necessitating a judicial warrant for an arrest to be made. According to Aristy, there are references in Article 223 of the Penal Code to flagrant crimes and Article 234 specifically mentions intra-family violence. Women and children who have been beaten are enough evidence to merit an arrest by police and local ADAs.
An agreement on the much-anticipated tax reform legislation could not be made between senators and business proponents, yesterday. In spite of having called the meeting with the country's lawmakers, the businesspeople arrived at the table with no new proposals. According to Listin Diario reporter Manuel Azcona, the head of the Senate Finance Committee, Alejandro Santos, met with representatives of the business community, headed by Elena Viyella de Paliza, Frank Castillo and Ivan Brugal. At the end of the meeting, Santos told reporters that the new tax package could not be ready by the 15 December deadline requested by the business associations, unless Congress were to participate in the negotiations. He said their involvement was necessary and they would not simply raise their hands in approval. The meeting, which started late, also began with some heated words between senators and the business representatives. The business groups argued that they were perfectly willing to reach an agreement to find solutions to the current economic crisis. They said that while there was a need for consensus, the senators had to remember that the resources for any solution would come from the business community itself, not from the good intentions of Congress or the government. Santos told reporters that the business community would have to submit some fresh ideas, as they did when they established the Transitory Voluntary Contribution in place of the 5% tax on exports. As reported in Hoy newspaper, the government yesterday said it would apply the 5% tax on exports, arguing that this is a requirement of the International Monetary Fund. The business community has requested that the Chamber of Deputies reject the tax on grounds that it is counterproductive. The business community wants the government to reduce its own unproductive spending.
Bienvenido Alvarez Vega, Hoy newspaper's editor, writes today on the insistence of the government to make the private sector, primarily the business community, pay additional taxes in order to cover the financial hole left by the mismanagement of commercial banks. Vega says the Mejia administration has already geared its economic policies in this direction. He writes that the business community has tried to resist, but without success, as the government is obliging the business sector to share the burden, for reasons Alvarez Vega cites as political in view of the imminent elections. Vega questions whether, morally, the government should be threatening the financial viability of companies in order to salvage banks that are not even theirs and to whose bankruptcy they played no part in. Vega says the real responsibility for the banks' woes should fall on the shoulders of the government, whose departments were both legally and technically responsible for not averting such a disaster. He writes that the Dominican government has not fostered independence of governmental agencies, but instead has secured the complicity of the private sector, knowing that out of chaos a government can reap inestimable yields. He concludes by saying that the government is wrong to carry out a campaign to sway public opinion into feeling that the business community should bear the costs of salvaging the banks that collapsed because of a lack of government surveillance and supervision. "We should not continue to erode the finances of the nation's productive sector in the name of a problem that supposedly belongs to everyone." From the start, the government should have assisted the ailing institutions to stem the flow that has "contaminated the rest of society," he writes, mentioning that there is still time for damage control - even though the damage has been done.
The economic section of the Listin Diario reveals an United States Agency for International Development (USAID) report that indicates a possible loss of 46,000 jobs if the Dominican Republic fails to enter a free trade agreement. On the other hand, such an agreement would preserve employment for 16,640. The study conducted by the agency shows that the signing of a free trade accord would certainly affect the Dominican free trade zones, as it presents three possible scenarios. The first envisions the Dominican Republic not signing any such agreement, entailing 46,000 jobs lost in the "zonas francas". Exports from the zones would drop to 61% of current levels, generating a loss of US$850 million. In the second scenario, the DR would form part of the CAFTA and suffer the impact of textile quotas that would start in January 2005. This would be slightly attenuated by the preservation of 16,640 jobs and shipments worth US$305 million. The third possibility suggests that if the Dominican Republic were to sign on to the CAFTA and submit to the rules of origin for textiles and soft goods, the sector would have to reduce its costs by 10%, so as to mitigate the blow. The study explains that beginning in 2005, the textile quotas and limits on imports from Asia would be removed, thereby injuring Dominican Republic's market share.
President Hipolito Mejia authorized the duty-free import of books and magazines, proclaiming them educational material needed for teaching and cultural enhancement. The good news is contained in Decree 1078-03, which was released by the President's Legal Advisor, Guido Gomez Mazara in a ceremony at the Presidential Palace yesterday. Book importers nevertheless say that the tax reduction has been over-publicized. They indicate that the government has yet to eliminate the 10% exchange surcharge, which continues to be levied on books assessed in customs. Book retailers say that since the peso has continued to depreciate against the dollar, customers should not expect books to cost less in the short term.
The sliding peso and its effects on inflation and the cost of living in the Dominican Republic continues to make headlines today. Hoy newspaper reports that the Dominican currency was being sold yesterday for a record RD$43.50 to US$1. Meanwhile, the Central Bank is listing a rate of RD$40.58, which is used by most commercial banks to purchase dollars for resale. Businessman Domingo Espinal Collado said that if the run on the peso is not contained, many more businesses will be forced to close. Sectors say that today the main cause for the peso's decline is lack of confidence in the authorities. Press reports also point to the small number of authorized foreign exchange agents, which gives way to price fixing. Economist Frederic Emam Zade says that, given the increase in dollar that the tourism and remittance sectors are generating, the peso should stand at no more than RD$30 to US$1.
The headlines from today's El Caribe tell the sad story of HIV patients living in the Dominican Republic. According to Alicia Ortega, there have been 32,000 deaths from HIV-related illnesses since the onset of the AIDS crisis. The Epidemic Vigilance Department of the Public Health Ministry estimates that by 2005 there will be 78,000 deaths attributable to AIDS. The results of the Health Census of 2002 show that 1% of the population studied of reproductive age are infected with HIV. Government estimates say that as many as 2.4% of the population are infected at this time. Maria Isabel Tavares, in charge of the unit that supervises HIV-positive and AIDS patients, told reporters that by 2005 there will be 141,000 people living with the disease. According to the technician, sexual contact is the primary of cause of transmission. Over the past three years, the government has started a program to prevent the vertical transmission of the disease, using modern medicines to prevent expectant mothers from transmitting the disease to their children. Over 1,500 children have been born to HIV-positive mothers without becoming infected themselves. Nevertheless, according to medical authorities, many more are born with the disease, either through ignorance or injustice, and there are approximately 5,000 cases of children under the age of five who live with HIV. Dr. Luis Montalvo, the director of Copresida, the people at highest risk are those who work in the sex trade, free zone employees, military personnel and those who work the "bateyes" or sugar fields. Montalvo says the increasing Haitian population is particularly worrisome because of the high incidence of the disease in that country.
After months of little or no publicity about the occurrence of dengue fever, Hoy newspaper headlines the preoccupation of doctors in the Cibao Valley regarding the illness. Some hospitals, such as the Luis Morillo King in La Vega, have as many as three afflicted children in each bed. In Santiago, a meeting of the National Commission for the Prevention and Control of Dengue met with doctors from the region who asked the authorities for more resources to fight the disease. The director of the Jose Maria Cabral y Baez Regional University's medical facility told the Commission that his emergency unit receives as many as 150 patients from outlying clinics and hospitals. According to some of the doctors present, the vector of the disease, the mosquito, has become immune to many of the more popular insecticides. A mosquito called the "Asian Tiger" is reportedly a new vector for the illness and is said to be more dangerous than the well known "Aedes Aegypti". As of last week there were 717 reported cases of dengue in Santiago, 78 of which were classified as the typical or classic type, 15 were hemorrhagic and 22 showed classical symptoms but with hemorrhagic manifestations. Two dengue-related deaths have been reported in Santiago. Dr. Manuel Tejada Bueno from the Public Health Ministry said there were about 4,000 cases reported as "probable" dengue and that of these about 1,000 have been proven to truly be dengue fever. Dengue fever is endemic in the Caribbean. Epidemiologists such as Amiro Perez Mera, the physician credited with eradicating polio and malaria in the DR in the 80s, points to the need for the public health authorities to get a hold of the problem. Physicians have complained that the government has not carried out the educational campaigns that need to be routinely conducted every year, so that the population can recognize dengue and get medical treatment early. Increased awareness would help people eliminate free-standing clean water in which dengue mosquitoes breed. Santiago, Duarte (Moca), and La Vega are the most affected provinces in the Cibao Valley. See http://dr1.com/travel/prepare/health.shtml#18
Hoy newspaper reports that the US$400,000 mobile hospitals the government purchased for the Pan American Games are being distributed to Dominican Institute of Social Security centers. The newspaper had reported that the expensive units were parked near the IDSS headquarters, and were deteriorating for lack of use. Hoy reporters were told that three of the five units have now been assigned to the Hospital Estrella Urena in Santiago. These units are equipped with modern medical diagnostic equipment. The Hoy report indicates, however, that some of the expensive diagnostic equipment has already been removed from the mobile units.
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