President Danilo Medina is keeping an especially low profile in recent months, as the Odebrecht corruption scandal makes headlines. He has been known to avoid being where he may be obliged to answer reporter questions.
Now Felix (Felucho) Jiménez, member of the Political Committee of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), says President Danilo Medina has authorized him to reveal that he will not be seeking reelection as President in the 2020 elections. In 2015, Medina pushed through a new Constitution that eliminated the clause in the 2010 Constitution that had prohibited him from running for President in 2016. As per the 2015 Constitution, Medina is banned from running again for President.
Being interviewed on the morning television show AN7, Jiménez, who is president of the Dominican Petroleum Refinery, the Dominican government and Venezuelan government entity, said that President Medina gave him the assignment of making the announcement during a recent meeting where they met to discuss the Odebrecht bribes.
Jiménez said that Medina authorized Felucho at his next media appearance, “to say in my name that Danilo Medina is not going to seek the presidential candidacy of the PLD and that Danilo will retire on August 16, 2020 and return to civilian life.”
President Danilo Medina has kept a notoriously low profile regarding accusations that link him to the Odebrecht bribes and overpricing scandal. The opposition has repeatedly accused Medina of accepting funds from Odebrecht for political campaigns, and the largest Odebrecht public work in the Dominican Republic, the Punta Catalina coal-fired power plant center is a major center of controversy over irregularities in the tender and overpricing.
While the government has repeatedly denied receiving funds for political campaigns from Odebrecht, these statements contradict confessions previously made to the Brazil judiciary by now incarcerated Joao Santana (Medina’s strategic electoral campaign planner) and key Odebrecht executive Hilberto Silva. Santana was sentenced for playing a central role in a massive bribery ring run by Odebrecht.
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Diario Libre
13 June 2017
