Opposition candidate Luis Abinader of the PRM has urged voters to cast their vote in favor of democracy and against dictatorship on 15 May 2016. An editorial in Diario Libre today, Wednesday 27 April 2016 gives insights into exactly what the term dictatorship means in the DR.
The newspaper’s managing editor Ines Aizpun writes that dictatorship does not mean that the Air Force will be shooting protesting citizens from Tucano airplanes, but it does refer to the excessive concentration of power in the hands of the ruling PLD. She points out that there is a “dictatorship with budgetary support.” She says: “There is a PLD dictatorship in the sense that the legislative and judicial branches act in unison with the executive branch.” Aizpun adds that in an interview with Diario Libre, presidential candidate Hatuey de Camps said that he had inside information that the price tag for opposition legislators to vote in favor of changing the Constitution to accommodate the presidential re-election of President Danilo Medina was RD$15 million. “That looks like a dictatorship,” she highlights, dubbing it a “dictablanda” or “soft dictatorship.”
“Neither the controls nor the audits work. The number of public employees is growing at a ridiculous rate and the oversight commissions do not fulfill the tasks for which they were created. The opposition was dismembered by the blatant purchase of the factions of each political party.
“It is not a dictatorship, but many government officials behave like mini-dictators without being removed. Corruption is neither prosecuted nor punished, and there is a generation that has grown up believing to be a PLD politician is a profession with a secure future.
“This is not a dictatorship, but there are no checks and balances of the powers, nor controls, nor juridical security, nor institutionalism. (I.e., this is not democracy either).”
