The opposition party PRD legislators in the Chamber of Deputies abandoned the session yesterday after hearing that the attorney general yesterday searched the offices of former minister of Agriculture and head of the PPH re-electionist movement, Eligio Jaquez. Without the PRD legislators, there is no quorum.
At the offices of Jaquez, prosecutor officers confiscated valuable documents that reportedly would contribute to clear the alleged fraudulent distribution of 51 greenhouses valued at US$180,000 built with funds borrowed by the government, for US$39 million, plus a RD$200 million governmental counterpart.
The director of Depreco, Octavio Lister acted after receiving information that in the offices of Jaquez were several documents that could lead to establish the truth of the matter.
Depreco suspects that Eligio Jaquez is said to be the real owner of the greenhouses assigned to his brother, Epigenio Jaquez. Depreco, the government Department for the Prevention of Corruption, investigators are looking for documents that support their claims of malfeasance in an office in Santo Domingo. The Listin Diario says that these documents will be the centerpiece of the government’s indictments.
Spokesman for the PRD in the Chamber of Deputies, Ramon Agramonte did not state that they left the session in protest for the search, but did describe as “imprudent, lacking intelligence and political sense,” the statements by the secretary general of the PLD yesterday justifying the attorney general office moving against corruption on the terms of that if the government did not condemn nor take to justice the alleged corrupt in the past government, it would lose the congressional election in 2006 and the 2008 presidential election.
Last week, the Department for the Prevention of Corruption appropriated a large number of documents at the residence of former deputy minister of Environment, Andres Escarraman in Jarabacoa.
Meanwhile, Enmanuel Esquea Guerrero of the PRD responded: “Let them continue searching, that we will not approve the bonds nor the metro; we will not approve anything,” he said. And Eligio Jaquez himself urged the PRD declare an “open war” on the PLD “and its friends,” as reported in the Listin Diario.
Meanwhile, in an editorial today, Diario Libre comments that with the abandoning of the session, the Chamber of Deputies deals another blow to democratic institutions in the country when two members (Jaquez and Escarraman) of the party are being investigated. The editorial writer mentions that what the PRD legislators should have done was to summon the attorney general to the chamber to explain its procedures.