Cuban exile in Spain, Carlos Montaner, one of the leading Hispanic intellectuals of the day, had interesting comments to make on the master of Dominican politics, former President Joaquín Balaguer to El Siglo newspaper. Montaner says he has erred in forecasts on Balaguer and says he will no longer make any predictions. "I am no longer capable of assuring even if one day he will die, I don’t know," said Montaner, commenting on the 93-year old blind politician. He described Balaguer as "a politician who has more intellectual and political resources and more guile than anyone could imagine". "I believe he is one of the fascinating personalities of Latin American politics," said Montaner. In his words, "Balaguer is a unique case." He is impressed with the former statesman’s combination of human fragility and an ability to control all. "While he is not a man of the Dominican economic bourgeois world, he handled to will the businessman; while not a man of the armed forces, he handled them to his will; while not a man of the masses, all the contrary, a teacher totally culturally divorced from them, managed the masses to his whim. May I say one is in the presence of a magician. I was wrong, he was full of rabbits, and will die full of rabbits." Montaner was in Santo Domingo to promote his new book, "No perdamos también el Siglo 21" (Let us now lose also the 21st Century).
