President Hipolito Mejia said on the Sunday “Una Vez por Semana” TV show that security in the DR is under control. Meanwhile, with every passing day, more email messages are circulating telling of incidents that were previously unheard of in the Dominican Republic and raising questions about whether the government is actually using the security forces President Mejia has boasted about.
El Caribe covered the details of Mejia’s unwillingness to discard the notion that the DR could suffer a terrorist attack, while claiming that the country is prepared to prevent this. When referring to the potential for an act of terror similar to the destruction unleashed in Spain on 11 March occurring on Dominican soil, and given that the Mejia government authorized Dominican military to participate in the multi-nation military support group in Iraq, President Mejia highlighted the effective security system the country has inherited from the days of Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. “The DR has, without doubt, one of the most efficient security systems in the world, something that I would not have thought or believed, but one must admit that this is one of the least negative things we have inherited from Trujillo,” he said on TV last Sunday.
Mejia mentioned that proof of the security, intelligence and investigation networks are found in the “multiple and varied murders that have been put before the Police, which on the next day, or in two days, are solved.” To support his theory of superior national security, Mejia said that following the 11 September events, in less than eight hours he had in his hands a complete list of all the foreigners with “strange” last names that live here. Furthermore, he mentioned that some 2,500 Dominican military have carried out specialized courses in security matters. Mejia stressed on the TV broadcast, “We take national security very seriously because the country receives remittances and a great number of tourists.” Mejia also mentioned the sophisticated intelligence technology that was purchased from Israel, and boasted that “very few countries have the security system we have.”
“This does not mean that we could not suffer an attempt. That is easy – an attempt against the life of a person or throwing a bomb is not difficult.”
Meanwhile, Diario Libre today in its page-two editorial urges the authorities to act with more dedication. Journalist Ines Aizpun mentions the continued assaults in the Mirador del Sur Park and the new criminal trend of supposed parking assistants robbing cars.