Margarita Cordero of the Diario Libre editorial team deals with the proposed tourist development of Parque Nacional del Este. In her column today, titled “The Battle of Bayahibe,” she comments on the strange alliance of environmental activists and hoteliers, who do not usually have the protection of the environment as their priority. The real issue, according to Cordero, is neither commercial nor environmental, but rather the way the country is governed in the absence of strong institutions, and the way the Executive Branch (the President) exercises authority. The attempt to have the park’s legal limits redefined by Presidential decree is challenged by Cordero, with an aside about the irony of the name of the real-estate company that sold the plot of land – Corsario, or Corsair, meaning pirate raider. The first victim in this affair, she concludes, is Dominican institutionalism.