The United States ambassador, Hans H. Hertell addressed the Dominican chapter of the American Chamber of Commerce yesterday. He gave what can only be called a frank and precise picture of current United States thinking regarding the issues, past, present and future, facing the Dominican Republic. After his opening remarks, in which he spoke of the up-coming Thanksgiving Day in the United States, Hertell pointed out a short list of things that that the US and the DR could celebrate: macroeconomic stability, Dominican acceptance of the DR-CAFTA agreement, renewed economic growth, institutional strengthening in the DR – with high praise for Attorney General Francisco Dominguez Brito and Chief Justice Jorge Subero Isa, and the good bilateral relations between the DR and the US.
The ambassador then went on to point out some issues and problem areas, principally, drugs, slow approval of the needed changes for the DR-CAFTA agreement to go into effect, the growing “culture of impunity” where he pointed out that not only the US but the international community is awaiting the outcome of several ongoing trials, and then the major point of perhaps the whole speech. Hertell said that his fourth worry was the transparency of government purchasing. He pointed out that DR-CAFTA would oblige the Dominican government to adopt a procedure that was both open and competitive for all major purchases, and he pointed out the advantages of the system. As a case in point, the ambassador looked at the Metro. He said that the government “proposes to design, construct and operate a Metro, but it should provide the public with better information about the detailed engineering and transport studies, the financial plan and the environmental impact. “He said that “all these are elements to justify the construction of a project so vast, so risky and costly – especially if it is going to be built quickly – “fast track” – and that always costs more.” Continuing his comments on the Metro, Hertell said that the Office for the Reordering of Traffic has not given out any widely publicized announcement of a tender either nationally or internationally, nor has it defined the cost of the project, or how it will be financed, the technology to be used or the companies that have been selected.
The ambassador then called on President Fernandez, as “a man of vision and a leader”, to display more transparency and better public communication on the matter. He reminded the audience at the AmCham that “the best politics is good government.” And then he predicted that everyone would accept the costs of the projects once the issues were cleared up in the way that he suggested. He ended this segment by adding, in English, that the DR should be “open for business” and not “business as usual.”
Ambassador Hertell then looked at the social and economic situation of the poorest Dominicans. He praised the Fernandez administration for its efforts to assist the poor, and condemned those who exploit this poverty to organize illegal voyages to Puerto Rico or who promote prostitution and “white slavery”. He condemned the silence that surrounds the organizers of these trips, the corruption that protects them and the threats of violence against the poor that use them. He also condemned the cases of abuse against children, both as workers and as sexual objects. He pointed out that the United States Embassy, by law, must evaluate the institutional advances made by the government to prevent these types of human rights violations and to prosecute the offenders. He urged greater attention to the issue, speaking “as a true friend of the Dominican Republic”.
The last major point of the speech concerned the Dominican Republic and access to the Millennium Challenge Corporation in 2006. Hertell outlined the MCC’s aims as wanting to reduce poverty through economic growth, and to reward good policies. He said that the US Embassy was looking at how the Dominican Republic could obtain access to these funds. He said that there were objective criteria that governed access to the MCC and that the evaluators would have to place the DR in the top half of those countries requesting this sort of funding. He cited that there must be justice in government, but the World Bank had found that corruption controls in 2004 were below the average and had been falling for the previous three years. He pointed out that there was an equally poor rating for effective government. The second criteria for evaluation is investment in people. The Dominican Republic is near the mean for the percentage of children that finish primary education, but it is way below the level of other medium-low income countries’ expenditures on primary education. The country also falls short in the percentage of immunizations and money spent on public health. The ambassador looked at other economic aspects and summed up by saying that it would be convenient for the DR to get into the MCC.