On Monday, 17 February 2020, Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) candidate for deputy Bolivar Valera (El Boli) had posted a tweet stating: “The popis don’t vote, they only want their likes for participating in the protests.” Popis is a pejorative name given to well off young people. Valera was referring to the trickle of middle-class youths that had protested outside the Central Electoral Board (JCE) after the electoral body announced the municipal election was suspended on Sunday, 16 February. Bolivar Valera apologized and erased the tweet, but it already had been captured and gone viral.
On Wednesday, 19 February, three tear gas bombs would be detonated to disperse the dozens of youths protesting at the Plaza de las Banderas. A video shows that one of the tear gas bombs was ejected from a window on a third floor in the Central Electoral Board (JCE).
The tear gas bombs action had a contrary effect. Afterward, it was hundreds and hundreds of youths that would join the protest. What began as a trickle of people was now one of the largest spontaneous protests in the nation’s history.
Meanwhile, independent journalists focused on how the JCE had left up to the discredited Public Ministry the investigations and prosecution of who might have caused the collapse of the e-voting system. The Public Ministry and the Police announced the arrest of a police colonel Guzmán Peralta and a Claro technician Manuel Regalado. Regalado had tipped off Guzmán in a WhatsApp chat that something fishy was going on involving the e-voting equipment and shared the name of Army Colonel Koji Maruyama. In an interview with investigative journalist Alicia Ortega, Regalado explained the Public Ministry seemed intent on finding someone to blame for the failed election.
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Diario Libre
24 February 2020