The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Center for Governance and Social Management (CEGES) of Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC) university, presented the Report on Democratic Quality in the Dominican Republic “Universalizing Rights for the Formal and Substantive Citizenship of the 21st Century in Latin America and the Caribbean” — 2019. The document is described as an x-ray of the current state of the quality of democracy in the Dominican Republic.
The study places the Dominican Republic in the bottom five in the democratic quality of 24 countries assessed in Latin America and the Caribbean. The study indicates that the weaknesses of Dominican democracy are not only responding to the demands of the moment but are also structural and contrast with the booming economic progress that is not reflected in institutional and social advances. The study indicates there is growing distrust in state institutions and political parties, and in freedom of expression.
The ruling PLD has been in power since 2004. The PLD controls the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch, that in turns decides on the Judicial Branch. President Danilo Medina himself presides the National Council of the Magistracy that at present is deciding the new appointments to the Supreme Court of Justice.
The report says the “great improvements” that had been registered from 1994 to the beginnings of the 2000s have evaporated since the middle of the decade of 2010, with setbacks in the quality of elections, arbitrary use of state advertising, self-censorship and lack of diversity of opinion in the main media, very low levels of transparency in the private financing of political parties and democratic deficiencies in partisan practices.
Only Honduras, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela have scored worse than the Dominican Republic.
To carry out the report, the research team relied on the analysis, crossing and systematization of existing sources. The team used 15 indexes and international surveys, and nine national surveys, the latter from state agencies.
1 April 2019