President Leonel Fernandez will launch today the school year from San Francisco de Macoris as he spends the next few days in the eastern part of the fertile Cibao Valley. Waiting for the President are dozens, if not hundreds of groups, each one with a sheaf full of requests for jobs, public works and solutions to community issues. Top of the list are the remodeling of the Saint Vincent de Paul Hospital and the construction of four medical clinics around the growing urban area. One of the more curious requests will include the furnishing of more modern equipment for the local Public Works offices.
Major community groups are also going to request that the President decree that the area around San Francisco de Macoris be established as an "Eco-tourism Zone". The President will move on to Villa Tapia, Tenares and Moca before returning to San Francisco for the night. The President will be joined by Education Minister Alejandrina German at the Manuel Maria Castillo Secondary School, as the new school year gets under way. An estimated 2.6 million children are scheduled to start school today. Some private schools have already begun classes, and others will start next week.
The President's Social Plan distributed 200,000 pounds of food packages as well as school supplies, pre-natal care packages and medical care in advance of the chief executive's arrival.
Education Minister Alejandrina German has told Hoy newspaper that her department would be encouraging schools to emphasize reading in the school year that starts today nationwide. This year, students will be required to devote at least one hour to reading and analyzing texts. It will be obligatory to read a short story to pre-school children for at least 15 minutes. She said the measure is to encourage reading and improve Dominican students' spelling skills. She said an objective of the new school year is that public schools fulfill the day schedule of 8 am to 12:30 pm at the basic level; 8 to 1:30 pm at the middle level and 8 to 2:30 in the case of the polytechnic institutes. In the afternoon, public schools run from 2 to 5 pm in elementary, and 2 to 6 pm for middle and high school levels. Evening classes are from 6 to 10 pm. Her goal is that by 2015 public schools will only work two shifts per day. A recent Gallup poll revealed that children who attend public schools receive an average of just 2.5 hours of schooling a day. Private school children receive at least double the amount of instruction.
For the first time, parents will receive periodic report cards on their children. The idea is that they take a more active role in their children's education process.
German estimates that 73% of school age children are enrolled. Another goal is that 100% of children between the ages of 5 and 7 will attend school by 2006-2007. Illiteracy in the DR, according to an October 2002 National Census, is at 11%.
German also announced that bilingual education programs would begin in 17 schools nationwide. Bilingual classes will begin in pre-school, first grade and second grade, adding on grades as the program advances. She explained that the aim is for the students to be fully bilingual by the time they graduate. The minister estimated that 2,650,000 students are enrolled for the 2005-2006 school year.
Education Minister Alejandrina German has told Hoy newspaper that there are public schools in border provinces where all the students are Haitian children who have crossed the border most illegally. She said that this is the case in the provinces of Elias Pina and Pedernales, as well as in the border town of Jimani. She said there are also many places where there are undocumented children, assumed to be Haitian, but the authorities do not know for sure. German told the newspaper that the school system does not deny admission to any child. She explained there are also many undocumented children in the outskirts of Santo Domingo and La Romana, for instance, where there were sugar cane mills. The minister said that in many cases these are Dominican-born children of Haitian parents.
The government and the people will defeat crime, at least according to President Fernandez. The President, speaking in the hotbed of juvenile delinquency, Capotillo, said that together with the public's help, he and his government would fight delinquency and crime. He told the people of Capotillo that he would push for educational solutions and several public works projects that are needed in the barrio. With the chief executive's brief talk, the "Plan for Democratic Security" was officially launched in the Capotillo barrio. Citing Franklin D. Roosevelt, Fernandez repeated the famous phrase "that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," as he promised to do everything "that has to be done, with the community's involvement, to bring morality, peace and security to the barrio." As reported in Hoy, the President emphasized the need for a National Police force that had the confidence of the people and that is in no way associated with the criminals. The big news from Fernandez was that in October this year a new episode of Miami Vice will be filmed in Capotillo, and he said that "this will oblige Capotillo to become a model barrio, a barrio through which other barrios can be modeled."
Over the weekend the entire territory of the Dominican Republic suffered a series of three major blackouts. Saturday's papers talked about the second blackout in two days and headlines in Sunday' papers reported the third massive blackout. At 10:45 Saturday morning, the system collapsed for the third time as mechanics were working on one of the generators at the Itabo generation facility.
According to Francisco Mendez, the Superintendent of Electricity, Saturday's failure was caused by serious flaws in the supervision of transmission lines and financial limitations that prevent improvement on the high-tension lines. As reported in El Caribe, Mendez attributed the third major blackout to "a problem with the Itabo generator, which was undergoing repairs, resulting in a rolling blackout of the entire system. On Friday there was a short circuit in these lines. What is happening, is that the supervisory mechanisms are failing to do their jobs, and are (we) are lacking investment (in the lines) and the electricity distributors do not have the resources." Supervision of the transmission lines is the responsibility of ETE, the Electrical Transmission Company, part of the CDEEE. While Mendez did not give precise figures of the investment needed to repair the transmission lines and the supervision thereof, sources within the sector have told El Caribe that they need US$600 million. Opinions, however, appear to differ as to the causes of the blackouts. While Mendez said that there were 1,400 megawatts on line at the time of the blackout, Jose Luis Moreno, a consultant for the CDEEE, told El Caribe that there were less than 1,000 mw on line at the time. Moreno called Mendez' statement a "technical lie", adding that "they are trying to hide the fact that the generation system does not regulate, while the ORSI, the Regulating Organization of the Interconnected System, ignores the situation." Moreno contended, "There are daily partial blackouts due to the low generation, the system's vulnerability and the financial pressure from the generators."
On Monday, nevertheless, at least in several areas of Santo Domingo, the service seemed to have improved.
President Leonel Fernandez has appointed sociologist Julio Ortega Tous to the post of ambassador at the service of the Ministry of Foreign Relations, responsible for trade negotiations. Previously, he was the president of the economic advisors council of the Presidency. He had a prominent role in the restructuring of the foreign debt and that of Union Fenosa.
The DR-CAFTA agreement does not prohibit the government from assisting small and medium sized businesses. This means that in the future, the Dominican Republic can protect, reserve, foster or subsidize small businesses in order for them to remain competitive with similar entities from the Central American region. The news came out during the Workshop on the Competitiveness of the National Labor Force that was sponsored by INFOTEP. According to the information available, the Dominican state also reserved the right to make preferential purchases of products and services provided by small and micro-businesses. Hugo Rivera Santana explained that in the professional services sector the DR has managed to reserve the right to keep the restrictions currently in place in Dominican law that govern the performance of professional services. As reported in Hoy, this means that notary, accounting, auditing, and bookkeeping services will be available to be performed by foreign nationals associated with Dominican professionals in the same field. The law also obliges foreign engineers, architects and surveyors to form alliances with Dominican partners in order to work here. The legal profession is further controlled, since lawyers, in order to practice must have Dominican nationality and belong to the Dominican Bar Association (Colegio de Abogados). Foreigners also have to belong to CODIA, the Dominican College of Engineers, Architects and Surveyors, in order to practice.
As most readers already know, fuel prices hit an all-time high on Saturday as regular gasoline went up RD$$5.70 a gallon, premium rose by RD$4.30 and regular diesel fuel rose by RD$1.30. At RD$112.20 per gallon, and the dollar pegged at about RD$29.00 to the US dollar, consumers are paying much more than ever before. (Some estimates put regular gasoline at US$3.86 a gallon, vs. US$2.13 this time last year). Today's prices are the highest since the Hydrocarbon Law went into effect in 2000. In terms of prices in Dominican pesos, the previous high was RD$118.50 for a gallon of premium in early June 2004. However, the exchange rate at the time was hovering around the RD$45.00 to US$1.00 mark. The Ministry of Industry and Commerce attributes the new price increases to the decrease in the United States' fuel reserves and the continued increase in the price of crude oil on the world market.
The Dominican hotel sector, as represented by ASONAHORES, the association of hotels and restaurants, is willing to forego the privileges it receives under the Tourism Incentive Law 158-01 if these privileges are granted just to those hotels and services that are located in the least developed tourism areas. According to El Caribe, this could happen if the tax reform proposals now being studied include the sector's main recommendations, which are a VAT rate of just 8% on their goods and services and a 0.5% tax on real estate, whether in the name of a corporation or a person. The sector had been widely criticized for leaving the discussion table discussing the tax package. Until now, the group had not identified a source for the government to recover the funds that would be lost if the government were to accept their proposals. In VAT alone the government would lose in the neighborhood of RD$700 million, according to Enrique de Marchena Kaluche, the head of ASONAHORES. The Tourism Minister Felix Jimenez, revealed yesterday in a television interview on Diario Libre A.M. that the government has sacrificed RD$1.4 billion in revenues because of the Tourism Incentive Law. Rafael Blanco Canto, a former president of ASONHAORES, said that the sector was in agreement that the benefits of the law should go to those "areas least developed for tourism, such as Pedernales, Montecristi or Samana." De Marchena said that they were not talking about the revocation of the law, just an amendment that would focus the benefits of the law towards specific places. The hotel sector made a formal presentation of their proposal to Minister Jimenez and to the Technical Affairs Minister Temistocles Montas as well as the director of the Department of Taxes Juan Hernandez.
Tourism businessman Frank Rainieri of the Punta Cana Group has been very vocal in advocating that the fiscal reform set to go before Congress should serve as a tool for fostering national development. In an interview with Cesar Medina on Channel 9, Rainieri said that what has been drawn up so far is merely a way of compensating the government for revenue lost with the advent of the free trade agreement signed with the United States. "What we are doing is compensating, and this is not a road to development, we will have to continue doing the same thing every day," he told the newspaper. "We have to see the tools that we need in order to compete and to carry out sustainable development, and if tourism is one of those sectors, as has been demonstrated over the last 15 years, then it has to be supported," he stated. Asonahores seeks that tourism businesses in the DR are given equal treatment to that received by their regional competitors. Rainieri emphasizes that if the authorities were to support the industry, with investments in infrastructure and promotion, there could be six million instead of three million arrivals. The interview was transmitted on the Hoy TV program produced by Cesar Medina on Channel 9. He commented that the DR has lost out on 7,000 rooms that would have been built here and were instead built in Jamaica and Mexico because they enjoyed better conditions. "In Cancun the authorities award all sorts of facilities, there are no blackouts, garbage is picked up, there are totally lighted tourism corridors," he said. He explained that the tourism sector left the umbrella of the National Council of Businesses that was negotiating the fiscal reform with the government because of differences of criteria. "Our position is that there is still time to carry out a fiscal reform that backs national development, and the tourism sector has to be seen as a sector that needs to compete in the best of conditions," he stated.
The once-ubiquitous beeper's days are numbered. As of 27 August Verizon will discontinue their beeper service and Tricom is not accepting new clients for the localizer service. We now have to bid adieu to the alpha-numeric messages, the "beeper girls", the mini-messages, and, someday perhaps, the "beeper dance", a merengue that was created from the fact that when a beeper goes off, everyone stops what they are doing to look for their gadget. Only 17 years have gone past since beepers were introduced to the Dominican Republic, and now it has been dealt a mortal blow by the cellular phone. At the turn of the century, there were 200,000 beepers registered in the DR, but today Verizon has just 10,388 active accounts. There are currently over one million cell phone users in the Dominican Republic.
The Canadian government announced the appointment of Alvin Curling as the new Canadian ambassador to the Dominican Republic on 19 August. He succeeds Adam Blackwell.
Curling is a graduate in business administration from the University of Technology in Jamaica in 1961, where he studied prior to moving to Canada. Curling was first elected to the Ontario legislature in 1985 as the Member of Provincial Parliament for Scarborough-Rouge River, he served as Minister of Housing, Minister of Skills Development, Parliamentary Assistant to the Premier and Minister of Inter-governmental Affairs. As a member of Ontario's official opposition, Curling served in numerous positions including Deputy Opposition House Leader, Deputy Whip, as well as critic for Training and Skills Development, the Solicitor General and Human Rights. Most recently, he was honored by the Government of Jamaica with the Order of Distinction, at the rank of Commander. Curling most recently served as Speaker of the Ontario Legislative Assembly.
Over 170 political parties are seeking official recognition from the Central Electoral Board (JCE). By the time elections roll around in May 2006, the total could be as high as 200, all of whom are seeking official recognition, and of course, official funds, to run in the municipal and congressional elections. The group includes all kinds of political, community and regional interests and the names vary from the traditional three letter abbreviations such as PRD or PLD or MPD or even the four-letter PRSC, to such names as PIDO (I'm asking), or El MORO (The food) and MORENA (The dark-skinned girl). Some might say that this country produces more political parties and Major League ball players than anyone else. These various groups are known as the "slogan parties" that get very few votes and have very little chance of ever electing a municipal or Congressional figure. However, they do manage to get a piece of the financial pie if they are officially recognized as a political entity. During the 2002 election process some of these parties received just a few hundred votes: PUN got 296; APD got 205; MCI (not the corporation!) received 116; and PPC got only 94 votes across the entire country. In spite of all this, these parties still manage to get their two cents worth in decisions involving nominations for government ministers, directors of governmental departments, consulates and embassies. In 1962, eight parties went to the polls, compared to the last presidential election, when there were 23 parties vying for the top post. The reason is obvious. In 2004, the tiny - most people would say miniscule - APD group allied itself with the PLD to promote the Fernandez bid for the presidency. As a result of obtaining 84,566 votes, the party received RD$592.032.56. The BIS (Social Democrat Institutional Bloc) received RD$5.0 million and such nonentities as the PHD (seriously), PLRD, PPC, ASD, and MIYA each received over half a million pesos.
The Third Penal Chamber of the National District Court of Appeals has revoked the denial of the petition that favored former Police chief Jaime Marte Martinez and 32 other Police officers, and sent the group to stand trial. The magistrates considered that there was enough evidence to justify the probability of a conviction for breach of trust, embezzlement and misappropriation of over 100 stolen cars that the police had recovered but not returned to their owners. Judges Luis Omar Jimenez, Nancy Joaquin Guzman, Doris Pujols Ortiz, and Antonio Sanchez Mejia studied an appeal by the District Attorney for the National District, Jose Manuel Hernandez, who questioned the verdict pronounced by the magistrate of the Fifth Court of Instruction on 5 April. The Appeal Court magistrates decreed a trial motion for the accused Police officials.
The PLD and PRD governments have extradited 118 Dominicans to stand trial in the United States during the last seven years. Those extradited faced charges of murder, drug trafficking, fraud, rape and manslaughter. Over the same period of time, the United States has extradited just two people: Mariano Cabrera Duran (1998) and Ramon de Jesus Molina in 1999. Currently, the Dominican Republic is requesting the extradition of a third person, Sam Goodson, a naturalized US citizen.
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