The Economist lambasted President Hipolito Mejia in an article dated 12 February. “The President has been reckless in politics as well as economics,” reads the article, which opens with a comment on how Mejia was booed at the recent Caribbean baseball tournament, despite the DR team winning the opening game. “Having presided over an economic collapse in what was until recently a Caribbean success story, Mr. Mejia is deeply unpopular,” it observed. Dominican woes such as last month’s two-day strike, the slumping peso, volatile prices and frequent and prolonged electrical blackouts continue to plague Dominicans. The magazine says that while the country suffered from the world slowdown in Mejia’s first year in office in 2000, “his government made things much worse with an over-generous US$2.4-billion bail-out of depositors at Baninter, the third-largest commercial bank, which was bankrupted by fraud last April.” It also pointed to the suspension of the just-approved IMF agreement, which occurred when the Fund disapproved of certain government fiscal and electricity decisions. The British magazine’s writer speculates that the President’s attempt to be re-elected could be because “Mr Mejia has concluded that he is safest in the palace. Dominicans worry about how much more damage he might inflict.” See http://www.economist.com/.