Temple University professor Rosario Espinal has urged Dominicans to concentrate their energies on demanding substantial changes in the way the country is governed, and better living conditions for all, that instead of playing at politics. Writing in Wednesday’s Hoy newspaper, she says that there is a widespread epidemic of discredit for politicians that bases itself on a perverse glee over failure. “The failure of each government is seen as a social conquest,” she says. But she goes on to highlight that “the government’s failure is the nation’s failure, because it impoverishes many of its citizens, while government officials and politicians, even despite the adversities, end up enriching themselves and receiving protection from their own adversaries, who look the other way so as to preserve the corrupt systems that benefit them all. She called for a significant change in the way the country is governed, saying that if this does not happen, each new generation of politicians will never be able to resolve the country’s problems either. “Critical activism is an inherent part of democracy and needs to be preserved. But the liberty that democracy grants should not be used up to wait for the failure of each government and vote for the next, because without government successes the ones who suffer the most are the citizens, not the politicians nor their courtesans,” she writes in Hoy newspaper.