On Sunday, 16 February, the Attorney General’s Office and state agencies arrested Claro’s technician, Manuel Antonio Regalado Martínez, and Colonel Ramón Antonio Guzmán Peralta, a Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM) security officer. Guzmán Peralta, who only recently had been appointed security officer for PRM presidential candidate Luis Abinader, had received a Whatsapp from Regalado Martínez mentioning that Army officer Colonel Koji Maruyama was suspiciously seeking to penetrate the Claro Herrera office. Regalado Martínez had alerted Guzmán Peralta of plans to tamper with the e-voting system.
The local media has followed up almost on the hour on how Regalado Martínez, whose whereabouts were not known initially by his family, was released from questioning by the Police, but would be taken to the Centro Medico Moderno that diagnosed him with an ankle sprain and shoulder trauma. Regalado remained around 48 hours at the Police headquarters for questioning.
The authorities have not announced that they will investigate Koji Maruyama. On the contrary, Reinaldo Pared Perez, director of the National Security Agency (DNI), defended that Koji Maruyama is the Army officer in charge of the custody of the automated voting machines and will not be investigated. The JCE says the investigation is up to the Police and the Office of the Attorney General.
The lack of transparency by the authorities is breeding more questions as the media digs into the reasons behind the e-voting “glitch” that led to the unprecedented cancelation of an election in the Dominican Republic. The president of the ruling Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), Temístocles Montás claims there was sabotage of the municipal election because they were winning.
The JCE president, Julio Cesar Castaños Guzmán, and Defense Minister Ruben Dario Paulino Sem insist that the investigations into allegations of fraud behind the collapse of the automated voting system are the responsibility of the Police and the Office of the Attorney General. The JCE president had earlier attributed the failure to a JCE lack of quality controls.
The lack of an independent investigation has spurred a trickle down of information.
So far, Defense Minister Paulino Sem has denied that Koji Maruyama is the logistics officer (J4) of the Ministry of Defense. “We want to make one clarification because the investigation is being carried out by the Attorney General’s Office with the National Police. And the clarification is that this officer is from the Armed Forces, he was acting in an Electoral Military Police role. He is not the logistics officer of the Ministry of Defense. The J4 logistics officer is Colonel Lizardo Pérez.” He refused to answer other questions on the matter posed by journalists.
Stay tuned.
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Listin Diario
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El Caribe
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YouTube – Mariasela Alvarez
YouTube
YouTube – video on reasons for collapse of system at JCE
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Z101
20 February 2020