| Daily News - Wednesday, 08 September 2004 |
Finance Minister Vicente Bengoa, Customs Director Miguel Cocco and director of Internal Revenues Juan Hernandez have asked the Senate to approve the tax reform bill as received from the Chamber of Deputies. As it currently stands, the bill includes a controversial 25% surcharge on corn syrup imports, which was lobbied for by the local sugar industry and which would modify the terms established in the free trade agreement (DR-CAFTA) signed with the United States. The sugar industrialists say that the cheaper sweetener would be more attractive to local soft drink and juice manufacturers because of its lower cost and thus would undermine their profitability as an industry. At the present time, the sugar producing industry (made up by two sugar producers) holds a monopoly on sugar sales in the DR, which in turn affects the competitiveness of other industries that use sweeteners as an input material. Legislators have chose to ignore this sector of industrialists in their quest to protect the sugar industry from the US import.
Sugar lobbyists have secured the support of a majority of deputies, who say that if the surcharge is removed by the Senate, they will reinstate it once the bill returns to the lower house, as reported in Hoy newspaper.
The surcharge is furthermore being disputed by the US Trade Representative's Office on the grounds that it violates the DR-CAFTA and other trade agreements accorded between the DR and the World Trade Organization. The USTR say that the imposition of the surcharge would indefinitely suspend the DR-CAFTA.
If the bill is again modified, it would need to be sent back to the Chamber of Deputies, thereby further delaying its passage. The new fiscal package will mean an increase in taxes on most goods sold in the Dominican Republic and is expected to bring a windfall of fresh resources to the new government, as well as open the doors to new financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Interamerican Development Bank.
Minister Bengoa proposed that the bill be approved as is, with the government to send another bill to Congress to propose the elimination of the 25% corn syrup surcharge.
Economist Rafael Camilo, the current superintendent of banks, also commented that the inclusion of the surcharge to protect local producers generates a conflict that should have been discussed at the negotiations table outside of Congress. He expressed the importance of approving the tax reform swiftly in order to resume the IMF stand by agreement. The government expects the IMF agreement to be extended to two years, and a mission recently traveled to Washington, DC for these talks.
Several new museum directors have been chosen and these are Carlos Hernandez Soto, Dominican Man Museum; Ana Yee de Cury, Museo de las Casas Reales; Maria Elena Ditren, Modern Art Museum; Hector Luis Martinez, Museum of History and Geography; Juan Bautista Mieses Pimentel, Columbus Lighthouse museum; and Luisa Genoveva de Pena Diaz, National Museum Network. Other appointments made in the fine arts field include Rosa Maria Vicioso, artistic director of the National Theater; Raquel Cocco Gonzalez, director of the Gran Teatro Cibao; Bernarda Jorge, director of Bellas Artes; and Manuel de la Cruz, director of the National Center of Handicrafts (Cenadarte).
The Fernandez administration has plans to centralize all government communication with the press and public, according to presidential spokesman Roberto Rodriguez Marchena. The information agencies of the new government are Direccion de Informacion, Analysis y Programacion de Estrategia (Carlos Dore); Direccion de Informacion y Prensa de la Presidencia (Rafael Nunez) and the Centro de Informacion Gubernamental. Rodriguez said that barring an emergency, the only government delegate to the press would be himself. This has not been the case so far: While President Fernandez has not been readily available to the press, there has been no scarcity of press interviews with his cabinet officers.
El Caribe comments today that the announcement comes shortly after Congress passed a freedom of information law that establishes the government's obligation to provide information on its actions to the public upon request by citizens.
President Leonel Fernandez pledged yesterday to uphold a policy of zero tolerance for delinquency in the Dominican Republic. He expressed his concern at the recent rise in criminal activity, which he views as a result of the moral decomposition that has besieged Dominican society. He announced that he had met with Armed Forces Minister Admiral Sigfrido Pared Perez and Police Chief Major General Manuel Perez Sanchez to design a plan to increase security of citizens.
Insurance Superintendent Euclides Gutierrez Feliz said that as of Tuesday, police officers had returned 85 of the estimated 300 vehicles that are unlawfully in their possession. In a recent controversy, it emerged that the police force had distributed recovered stolen vehicles among its officers without notifying the proprietors. Following Police Chief Major Perez Sanchez's request that these vehicles be returned, it appears that those officers who benefited from the wrongful use of the vehicles and turn them in will not be penalized, which has been motive for indignation among citizens. Police chief has said this was a normal practice in the Police and would not prosecute those who return the vehicles.
Euclides Gutierrez Feliz, Insurance Superintendent, said that the cases of the returned vehicles would be forwarded to the corresponding insurance companies, who could then bring the cases to justice. Gutierrez expressed to El Caribe his agreement that the police and government officials who do not hand over the vehicles have charges brought against them for complicity to theft. The 72-hour deadline given for the return of the vehicles has already expired.
The cars and SUVs were turned in when the new superintendent complied with a petition to this end, received from the association of insurance companies that first reported the irregularity. Previously, a similar petition of the companies had gone unheeded by Gutierrez's predecessor.
Attorney General Francisco Dominguez Brito said on the Hoy Mismo TV program yesterday that each case would have to be looked into individually to establish responsibility. He spoke of the difference between a vehicle that a police officer employed for his personal use and another that was used in the course of police duty. The AG also mentioned the distinction between those vehicles that have been reported stolen by the owners and recovered by police agents, and those that were confiscated by the police from gangs that use stolen vehicles to commit crimes. Dominguez Brito is of the opinion that there should be penalties levied, even if only applied administratively. As reported in the Listin Diario, he said the fault is even more serious in the cases of vehicles being given to girlfriends of police officers. "There is an obligation to establish responsibility for the use of these vehicles, when the legitimate owners were not notified of their recovery," Dominguez Brito told the Listin.
Furthermore, he said that the problem is made more complex by the fact that many of the vehicles may have been part of insurance fraud. He said there are criminal gangs who invent thefts so that the owners may collect on the full insurance.
Diario Libre reports the arrest and investigation of the head of the police department that deals with the recovery of the vehicles, Captain Cordino Espino. The newspaper says the documents that establish who had which vehicle are missing and that the department heads from 1999 to date are being investigated. The vice-president of the Dominican Chamber of Insurance Companies, Miguel Villaman, says that so far this year, of 279 stolen vehicles claimed for insurance, only 36 have been recovered. He indicated that more luxury SUVs than cars are stolen, even though of the one million vehicles in circulation, 80% are cars. He said this year 120 luxury SUVs have been stolen and 92 cars. Of the 85 vehicles returned by police officers, at least 30 are "jeepetas."
President Fernandez said the moral crisis that affects Dominican society is so profound that police officers view their appropriation of stolen vehicles instead of returning them as normal. "That practice is part of the social decomposition framework the country is experiencing today and which is behind the increase in delinquency," he said.
The Listin Diario's political analyst Orlando Gil shares today the experiences of a Dominican journalist, Nelson Encarnacion, now living in New York, who wrote to him to tell him of two encounters related to the police scandal now making news. He first tells of a woman who had reported the theft of her BMW to the police, when one day she saw it parked in front of the Cantabrico restaurant. She had her keys with her and used it to retake possession of her car. To her surprise, however, she noticed that a police officer was in her pursuit, claiming his own ownership of the vehicle. She chose to drive straight to police headquarters. Once there, she sought out the director of the theft department and, with papers in hand, demonstrated her title to the vehicle. The police chief was forced to return the vehicle to its rightful owner.
Encarnacion also wrote to tell of his own escapades with the police when his car was stolen and subsequently used by delinquents in a crime. When the perpetrators were arrested and the vehicle confiscated, instead of being returned to him, the vehicle was transferred to a police major who worked in Los Alcarrizos. One of Encarnacion's friends who worked in the theft department alerted him that his car had been recovered, and with police press officer Simon Diaz he brought the case to the attention of General Jose Anibal Sanz Jiminian, then chief of police. He relates that General Sanz (the newly appointed chief of the National Drug Council) gave the guilty officer 24 hours to return the vehicle. Encarnacion says that this cost him a verbal clash with Colonel Bencosme Candelier, who then headed the theft department, and who alleged that the vehicle was part of the spoils of crime, even though it was not listed in the case file. Encarnacion then demanded that if the vehicle was not returned, he should be included in the dossier sent to the district attorney. Finally, Bencosme Candelier agreed to return the car to him, although it had been repainted red by the "new owner," a major in the National Police. Encarnacion writes that the drama did not end there because the police officer demanded to be reimbursed for the money invested to fix the car up. Encarnacion said he ignored this request and heard no more about it.
The correspondent concludes that not all those affected have the courage of the lady who "stole" back her BMW, nor the connections in the police that he had to confront both a colonel and a police major.
Alberto Leroux, the president of the Consejo Nacional del Comercio en Provisiones, and Julian Antonio Parra, the president of the Asociacion Nacional de Comerciantes Mayoristas de los Mercados, two merchant organizations, object to cattleranchers being handed the ownership of Parmalat Dominicana. They explain how the company benefited in 1994, when the Dominican government, represented by INESPRE, signed an agreement with the dairy producers, whereby they were given a lease on a milk processing plant that had been donated by Sweden to produce milk for school breakfast programs at a low cost. The dairy producers accepted the lease of the land and buildings for a paltry RD$100 a year. Leroux and Parra explained that shortly after, these properties were passed on to Parmalat International, which quickly reduced the share participation of the local dairy industrialists. With the property now worth an estimated RD$500 million, Leroux and Parra reminded that Parmalat International collapsed in Italy and the rest of the world where it had subsidiaries. In the DR, the dairy producers have announced that the Italians would sell their shares to dairy producers backed by Venezuelan investors.
Leroux and Parra feel the government should retake the plant to produce the milk for the school breakfast program, as originally intended. They propose that the government establish effective controls so that the alimentary program may operate without intermediaries, as reported in Hoy newspaper. In their opinion, no one should sell to a third party what is not one's own property to begin with, and they stressed the fact that the dairy farmers have the right to a lease only – not ownership of the plant.
Former Vice-President Milagros Ortiz Bosch, in a letter to the Listin Diario today, takes issue with the fact that lawyer Marino (Vincho) Vinicio Castillo included her among the former government officers he alleged had ordered "the squandering of criminal evidence" such as luxury vehicles, apartments, farmland and other property confiscated from Dominicans and foreigners arrested in the country for drug or money laundering. She said that while in government she interceded in the case of Mary Perez de Marranzini, who was represented by the National Council of Handicapped Persons, so that TV and radio hosts Tania Baez, Nuria Piera and Zoila Luna could use some of the confiscated property for humanitarian endeavors. Bosch said the first request was for a property to be used by the Consejo Nacional de la Discapacidad, and the second for a center to assist battered women, lobbied for by the TV and radio personalities. She said her petition was not successful in either case.
"I make this clarification with the intention to spare myself from the mudslinging that seeks to sully our conduct records, and within the criteria expressed by President Hipolito Mejia, that each one of his officers should be responsible for his or her acts in government," she concludes in the letter to the newspaper.
Diario Libre today tells of how in the first five months of the season, Dominican Major League ball players, Adrian Beltre (Los Angeles Dodgers), Alberto Pujols (St. Louis Cardinals), Manny Ramirez (Boston Red Sox), Miguel Tejada (Baltimore Orioles), David Ortiz (Boston Red Sox), and Ronnie Belliard (Cleveland Indians) are dominating the quest to lead in homeruns, runs batted in, runs and doubles.
The newspaper's sportswriter Vicente Mejia highlights that in the National League, Adrian Beltre led the homerun race with 44, closely followed by none other than fellow Dominican Alberto Pujols, with 43 grand slams. Behind them are Americans Adam Dunn (41) and Jim Edmonds (40).
In the American League, the leaders are Dominicans Manny Ramirez (38) and David Ortiz (36), both of whom play for Boston.
Runs batted in are led by Dominican Miguel Tejada and Ortiz, in both leagues, with 122 each.
Pujols leads for runs in the Majors with 118, followed by the legendary Barry Bonds with 110. Last month, Pujols became only the fourth player in Major League baseball history to turn in four straight 100 RBI seasons at the start of his career.
In the doubles stats, Cleveland's Ronnie Belliard is ahead with 46, closely followed by Brian Roberts (45), who leads in the National League, and Ortiz (42).
As reported on the DR1 Weather & Beyond Forum, Hurricane Ivan is no longer a threat for the Dominican Republic, although some rain and wind could be felt on the southern coast. DR1 weather experts indicate that Ivan is expected to pass well south of the DR, under the influence of a strong subtropical high over the western Atlantic and into the north-western Caribbean Sea that is expected to last for another two days before losing force. By then, the storm will have moved away from the island. The storm is predicted to pass south of Santo Domingo tomorrow (Thursday) at 2am, some 510 kms from shore. Heavy rain, some wind and storm surge is forecast for the area of Barahona. Given the changing nature of hurricanes as they approach the large island of Hispaniola, continued monitoring of the storm is encouraged. To follow the storm, see the DR1 Weather & Beyond Forum at http://dr1.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=34
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