Interior and Police Minister Franklin Almeyda dissolved the Municipal Police force last Friday and banned its members from using military and police garb and from bearing weapons.
Now, the president of the Dominican Federation of Municipalities Fausto Ruiz is disputing this decision and says he will contest the action taken before the Supreme Court of Justice. Ruiz, who is also the well-respected mayor of La Vega, believes the disbanding of the municipal police violated the Constitution.
He told the press that the resolution represented a tough blow to institutionalism in the DR and an attempt to undermine the decentralization of the state and municipal autonomy. Ruiz believes the action to have been inappropriate because the municipal police fall under the municipal autonomy established by Law 3455. He maintains that the measure is also contradictory and recalled how the chief of the National Police had recently called on the municipal forces to help the fight against delinquency.
The Listin Diario’s political analyst Orlando Gil explains in his column today that what lies behind all this is merely politics. Gil writes to say that the PRD has ensconced itself in the nation’s municipalities, most of which are in that party’s official control, now that the central government is under the PLD. He also says that what was most worrisome about the municipal police was not that their uniforms were so similar to those used by the National Police, but the fact that these men were armed.
Gil explains further: “Each weapon in the hands of a municipal agent is not just a gun in the hands of an authority, but one in the hands of a PRD man. The internal peace of the country is at risk if a party has its command centers spread out all across the territory, and that is, politically speaking, what the municipal police stations are and nothing else. One cannot forget that the Ministry of Interior and Police has denounced the massive distribution of weapons that took place under the previous authorities. And so, what is happening now with the excuse of dissolving the Municipal Police is that the government is disarming the PRD that had camouflaged its members in the uniforms of the municipal agents.”
Gil comments that this action is a follow-up to the disarmament efforts already directed at those holding the “friendly” permits and other irregular authorizations.