Senator Felix Bautista has become the first major PLD figure to be the subject of an investigation by the Justice Department for possible acts of corruption and asset laundering. These actions have also included the legal restraint advisory on hundreds of assets that the Attorney General has identified as the senator’s property and said to be worth more than RD$3 billion.
All of this carried forward by the Attorney General, Francisco Dominguez Brito, a former possible nominee for the presidency and a comrade in the party where both men are members of the principal organization, the Central Committee.
Bautista is the Organizational Secretary of the ruling PLD and the operational hand of the political team of former President Leonel Fernandez. During most of the Fernandez government he headed the Supervisory Office of Public Works of the Presidency. After the end of Fernandez’s first term of office in 2000, Bautista was arrested on 20 November 2000 during former President Hipolito Mejia’s administration, accused of inflating the cost of the highway built between San Juan and Vallejuelo by some RD$50 million. He was later cleared in the courts.
Analyzing the case, political scientist Rafael Toribio said that due to Bautista’s closeness to the PLD president, the action started by Dominguez Brito could not have been undertaken without consultations.
“Everything makes you think that President Danilo Medina is au fait with the situation because it would be very risky for the Attorney General to embark on an initiative of this scale,” he says.
Toribio estimates that this case creates a difficult political situation within the PLD because people close to former President Leonel Fernandez are saying that it is part of a plot to reduce the former President’s chances of returning to power. He points out that from the beginning, the Bautista case has been having repercussions in the internal struggle that he says exists within the PLD.
It is noteworthy that no defense has been forthcoming from the top leadership of the PLD towards Bautista, which could be attributed to the fact that they see this as a clash between the Fernandez and Medina loyalists.
http://www.diariolibre.com/noticias/2014/10/16/i839881_flix-bautista-alto-dirigente-del-pld-convertido-caso-emblemtico.html