The coordinator of the citizens rights group Participacion Ciudadana, Luis Scheker Ortiz said that “there is something rotten in the state of Denmark”, in reference to the stink of scandal that emanates from the decision to postpone the questioning of former President Hipolito Mejia by the District prosecutors in the case of former army captain Quirino Ernesto Paulino Castillo, arrested for the 18 December bust of 1,387 kilos of cocaine, and latter extradited to the United States on drug smuggling charges. El Caribe newspaper reports say that yesterday, the President met with Secretary of the Presidency Danilo Medina, chief of the Police Manuel de Jesus Perez Sanchez, legal advisor Cesar Pina Toribio, and Interior and Police Minister Franklin Almeyda to discuss citizen security and the summons to appear at the District Attorney’s office issued to former President Mejia. El Caribe reports that the meeting suspended a previously programmed meeting in which the President was due to discuss electricity matters.
He said that the former President had accepted to sit for questioning after receiving the summons on Wednesday. Nevertheless, Mejia had announced his participation in a TV talk show on Monday morning. Mejia had told the press, “On Monday we will be saying some important things. On Tuesday we will be at the prosecutors office with great pleasure because we will go into depth into the PEME case, the privatization of the Electricity Corporation and the State Sugar Council (CEA), and the reports of the power distribution companies,” he told the director of El Nacional newspaper, Radhames Gomez Pepin. He also said that he would look into the report on the reconstruction of the country after Hurricane Georges, and the case of the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development headed by President Leonel Fernandez.
He said he was not aware of the reasons that led prosecutor Jose Manuel Hernandez Peguero to indefinitely postpone the summons to the former President to explain his ties with former army captain Quirino Ernesto Paulino Castillo. The decision came after Hernandez met with President Leonel Fernandez. Hernandez Peguero said the decision was made independently, after receiving a torrent of information regarding the case of the extradited former army captain. “These new pieces of information require that we examine some relevant aspects of the investigation before fulfilling the measure we have ordered,” said Hernandez, after the meeting with the President. Hernandez said the meeting with Fernandez was of his own initiative and took place to announce to the latter that he was postponing the date of the summons. He mentioned that judge Rosalba Garib Holguin, who is preparing the Paulino Castillo case, had described it as “complex”, and gave the prosecutor’s office eight more months to gather evidence.
Scheker Ortiz says that the impression this gives the population is that there is “political fear about getting involved in certain cases.” “That’s the impression one gets when actions are taken and then cancelled,” he said. As reported in Hoy newspaper, Schecker Ortiz said that by postponing the summons, the population gets a feeling of insecurity that really things are being handled superficially or lightly and with the first earthquake tremor we all are shaking.