After remaining silent when sectors spoke up against the Presidential decision to develop areas of National Parks, Minister of Environment Frank Moya Pons answered press questions at an environmental workshop held in Boca Chica yesterday that was attended by President Mejia himself. Minister of Environment praised the presidential decision to request that the Senate put aside the bills that would modify the parks until the status of ownership of the properties is clarified. President Mejia in a letter to the Senate said that he would wait until the Ministry of Environment submitted a bill establishing the use of protected areas as is established in the Environment Law (see http://www.dr1.com/daily/news01501.shtml). The Ministry is preparing the Ley Sectorial de Areas Protegidas that will contain this information. Moya Pons said that to draft the bill they are consulting spokespeople in the communities, businessmen that would benefit or be affected, and the civic society. El Caribe newspaper points out that at the workshop, President Mejia disregarded the opinion of the ecologists, calling them "radicals" and maintained his conviction that these areas should be developed for the well being of the communities. "When poets talk to me, those that I may call ecologists living in outer space, those that are crashing in the stratosphere, digressing up there without landing, then I am concerned because one thing is what is ideal and the other what is possible. I am President for four years and I can’t digress a lot. And even if I wanted or not, for reasons that be, there are two sectors that are the motors of the economy and these are free zones and tourism," said the President, as quoted in El Caribe. "I have to guarantee that tourists continue to visit," he stated. (16 March 2001)
