President Leonel Fernandez sent to Congress three bills that seek to establish legal guidelines for governmental purchases, contracting of public works, services and concessions. The bills also look into norms for internal controls of the Controller General office and there is a bill to strengthen the National Treasury that would impede the unrestricted taking on of loans. The bills establish that the government officers would be personally responsible for damages, negligence or fraud. The Executive Branch says that the bills will guarantee transparency in the handling of public funds in this government.
The Fernandez government has been criticized for its lame approach at prosecuting blatant corruption in the past government. The coordinator of Participacion Ciudadana, a leading civil society group, recently said that there is no political will in government to prosecute past corruption. President Fernandez recently emphasized the importance he is attributing to preventing future corruption in his 2004-2008 government. “I believe that the struggle against corruption goes beyond what is purely coercive, and is also preventive,” he said. President Fernandez mentioned the new Ethics Committee he recently empowered that has amongst its tasks to prevent corruption in the present administration.
He asked the civil society to be patient and said recently that his government has been in power for only seven months. He said that his government started amidst an economic crisis and is trying to push the country ahead.
Commenting on the issue, political analyst Orlando Gil of the Listin Diario said that President Fernandez has stated that his priority is the economic restoration of the country. “There is a go ahead to move the country ahead in economic matters, not so in moral matters,” he writes. Gil criticizes that when the President talks about impatience, he forgets that the government has shown this same quality when it made the announcement of the construction of the Santo Domingo metro without waiting for the public finances to recover. Gil criticizes that the President puts aside the need to morally restore the country. Gil says that as far as he is aware, government prosecutors are not part of the economic team. Gil concludes: “If there is not a political decision and the state prosecutors take the adequate steps, the country will regret the granting of this impunity for years to come.”