The executive vice president of the Foundation for Institutionalism and Justice (Finjus), Servio Tulio Castaños Guzman told reporters on 24 October 2017 that the judicial system will be put to the test to solve the Yuniol Ramírez Ferreras murder that revealed the mafia culture and criminal structure that has operated at the Metropolitan Bus Services Office (Omsa), a public transport government agency.
Castaños Guzmán said that the case reveals the lack of controls in government purchasing. He speculated that the same kind of criminal network could exist in other government agencies.
“Who controlled the purchasing committee, who assessed the Omsa tenders has to be investigated because what this case shows is a scandalous situation in regards to everything dealing with purchasing,” he said. He said the Public Ministry has a great challenge because the case reveals that the government purchasing system is a disaster in the country, as reported in El Nacional.
Castaños said that there are people missing in the file prepared by prosecutors on the case. “It would seem that we are in front of an institution where a criminal structure of enormous dimensions was installed,” he added.
He pointed out that the country’s justice system is very weak, evidenced by rankings that show the Dominican Republic among the six countries with the lowest levels of judicial independence. He said the justice system has regressed in an enormous way.
“The political system often penetrates the justice system and damages everything,” he said.
The executive vice president of the Foundation for Institutionalism and Justice (Finjus), Servio Tulio Castaños Guzman, told reporters on 24 October 2017, that the Dominican Republic has performed badly in the latest Global Competitiveness Report from the World Economic Forum. The DR is ranked 130rd in judicial independence of the 137 countries covered. In Latin America, the DR came in just above Venezuela that is ranked 137th, Nicaragua is 136th and Ecuador is 135rd. On the other side of the ranking, Finland is the first, followed by New Zealand and Norway in this ranking.
Castaños Guzman told the reporters that this study shows an uncommon setback of the local judiciary and should be taken as the basis for designing public policies to reverse the situation. He noted quite plainly that the main problem of this reality is that politics has often dominated the judicial system, creating poor results.
Castaños Guzman spoke during a panel that dealt with the national network of organizations that identified and protected certain groups in vulnerable situations held at the Santo Domingo Sheraton. The activity was chaired by the director of the National Office of the Public Defense, Laura Hernandez Roman and co-sponsored by Finjus. During the activity, Finjus signed a cooperation agreement with the National Office of Public Defender (ONDP) for the formation of the “National Network for Identification and Protection of Groups in Conditions of Vulnerability.”
Read more:
El Nacional
Diario Libre
Global Competitiveness Report
25 October 2017
