Former President Leonel Fernandez will speak to Yale students about the future of Latin America in the 21st Century, today, Tuesday 9 April.
Fernandez was President of the Dominican Republic from 1996-2000 and from 2004-2012. He is visiting Yale University as a Chubb Fellow.
The Chubb Fellowship is one of the highest honors accorded to a visiting speaker. The fellowship is administered by the master of Timothy Dwight College, Jeffrey Brenzel ’75. Since 1949, Chubb Fellows have included former US Presidents, numerous heads of state, and prominent public figures in government, industry, and the arts.
Fernandez’s talk – titled “In the 21st Century: Does Latin America Matter?” – will take place at 4:30pm at the Yale Law School.
Fernandez is recognized for his dynamic and aggressive policies that reinserted the Dominican Republic into the international sphere, bringing the country out of traditional isolation and beginning processes of regional integration, open markets and globalization. Fernandez also backed the country’s present open skies policies that have resulted in it being one of the best served by air in the region, backed by enviable roads infrastructure nationwide. Foreign investment also grew under Fernandez’s governments as the country.
At the same time, under the Fernandez government corruption, wasteful government spending, taxation, government borrowing, the fiscal deficit, and crime reached all-time highs while quality of education reached an all-time low (World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report), posing for great challenges to his successor. A master at politics, in his last term Fernandez was able to lead his party to absolute majority in both houses in Congress that enabled him to be very influential in the choice of judges for the new Constitutional Court and missing judges for the Supreme Court of Justice. His wife, Margarita Cedeno, was elected Vice President on the Danilo Medina ballot in May 2012. Fernandez leads the ruling PLD party. While he could not run for President in the 2012 election, he can run again in the 2016 election.
The event is open to the public and will be broadcast live on the Yale YouTube channel. To follow the talk, “In the 21st Century Does Latin America Matter?” see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26cnI_UI4gU&feature=plcp