A boycott by fourteen PRD senators kept the much discussed bond issues from getting a vote yesterday. The Senate started its session with a bare minimum of 17 senators present, however, Santiago senator Victor Mendez abandoned the floor, and broke the quorum. Senate president Andres Bautista told reporters that “outside efforts” had pressured Mendez to abandon the session in order to block approval of the bond issues that were on the agenda. Senator Mendez apparently received several phone calls from what El Caribe newspaper called ” high ranking members of the PRD” before he left the floor of the Senate, thus breaking the quorum.
The government needs congressional authorization to replace the 2001 (US$500 million) and 2003 (US$600 million) sovereign bond issues for new issues as a measure to ease the debt payment schedule for the country. The senators are supposed to approve RD$8.0 billion in new bond issues that are part of the 2005 budget law.
Several other issues were on the table as well, including two international loans to shore up the financial and banking sectors.
The senators that left the floor got together later at the office of PRD spokesperson Anibal Garcia Duverge, located in the Mirador Sur section of the city. Once there, they talked to reporters and said that they had agreed not to meet on the Senate floor in order to take the Holy Week recess (adjourning on Tuesday, 29 March) to “reflect on things.”
Commenting on the political boycott, Franco Uccelli of Bear Stearns states: “Yesterday’s developments confirm that politics in the Dominican Republic continues to be a potential spoiler of an otherwise improving economic story, one where interest rates continue to trend downward (they declined to 20.4% in last week’s Central Bank CD auction), the peso remains stable at around 28.5 DOP/US$, inflation has dropped to single digits (the 12-month rate stood at 6.8% in February) and the country’s net international reserves have grown by some 55% so far this year to top US$925 million.”