President Danilo Medina cancelled his participation in the 68th meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations on Wednesday, 25 September at the last minute to be able to chair the Council of Ministers reading of the 2014 National Budget. The budget needs to be presented to Congress on 1 October. When Medina spoke at the Assembly last year he rallied for more help for developing countries, proposing that the indicators used to measure a country’s development should not be limited to just economic prosperity.
El Caribe speculates that Medina may have cancelled his trip following a Friday, 20 September meeting at the Presidency between the United Nations Development Program representative in the Dominican Republic, Lorenzo Jimenez de Luis, who advocated for the restitution of Dominican nationality to people of Haitian origin. As reported, President Medina told the visiting mission of 14 UN agencies that the issue of nationality was covered in the Constitution and he could not fulfill their request for him to intercede because it was a matter that comes under the remit of another branch of government. Two days later, on Sunday, 22 September, the President announced he would not be traveling to New York to participate in the UN General Assembly as originally planned. As reported in El Caribe, the President had received reports that campaigners for the rights of Haitian immigrants would be mobilizing in New York to exert pressure on the Dominican government.
The Dominican Constitution establishes that every person born in the Dominican Republic is Dominican, providing they are born to Dominican parents or foreigners with legal status. This means that the children of undocumented foreign parents retain their parents’ nationality.
On the same day that the Presidency announced the suspension of the trip to the UN General Assembly, Senate president Reinaldo Pared Perez stated that the DR should not bow to international pressure aimed at imposing criteria on who is or is not a national. “Sovereignty is ours and no one else’s,” stated Pared via his Twitter account.
First Lady Candida Montilla de Medina traveled to New York to participate in a high-level meeting on disability and development on Monday 23 September during the General Assembly sessions.
The Council of Ministers will meet at the Presidential Palace at 10am today, Wednesday 25 September and all of the government ministers have been invited. In 2013 the budget was RD$443.34 billion and for the first time included an allocation to education equivalent to 4% of the GDP, or nearly RD$100 billion.
http://presidencia.gob.do/comunicados/presidente-medina-no-ira-la-onu-conocera-presupuesto-para-2014
Ven Danilo Medina no fue a la ONU en rechazo a pedido injerencista