Editorial writers seize on today’s date to make some chilling analogies about Dominican politics. Ana Mitila Lora, writing in her “Mochila al hombro” column in Listin Diario newspaper, speaks of spider webs obscuring the truth, especially when it comes to the Dominican justice system. Terms like bankruptcy, collapse and debt are used as euphemisms for fraud and extortion. The questions from several quarters about the Baninter void have remained unanswered: What has the government done to recover the funds? Has businessman and Baninter associate Luis Alvarez Renta paid back the millions, as he said he would do? It appears, Mitila Lora says, that the state does not need these trifles, even as prisoners are starving and hospitals lack medicines. She quotes a fellow journalist, Juan Taveras Hernandez, who once said, “Dominican justice is not blind, it is one-eyed.” The writer can be contacted at anamitila@hotmail.com
Diario Libre’s back-page column also uses the imagery of Halloween to describe the situation at the Central Electoral Board (JCE), where the PLD opposition party is questioning the practices of some officials. The board is divided along party lines, and the writer, Adriano Miguel Tejada, says that a “Solomonic solution is being sought”, remarking that at the JCE, every day is like All Hallows Eve. Tejada’s address is atejada@tricom.net