As of Friday, 24 April 2020, Greater Santo Domingo will have new city authorities. That includes the National District that is the capital city, and the municipalities of Santo Domingo East, Santo Domingo West and Santo Domingo North, Boca Chica and Los Alcarrizos.
For many of the municipalities, there will be a change in political parties. Reporters say that in these the new authorities will have to catch up for several services that the outgoing authorities have been lax about, including garbage collection. Reports are that in recent weeks, the past authorities have been catching up with garbage collection to leave a clean municipality to the new authorities. On the positive side, the stay-at-home order means there is less trash and no traffic congestion, making city sanitation efforts more efficient.
Santo Domingo West will have new leadership. The Peña family dynasty of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) had been in control since 2002. Francisco Fernández won the city government for the PRM.
Los Alcarrizos will be seeing a new mayor after Junior Santos, for the PRD, held the position for 14 years. The new mayor is Cristian Encarnacion of the PRM.
Four consecutive terms of the ruling Dominican Liberation Party come to an end in Santo Domingo East. Three for the late Juan de los Santos and one for Alfredo Martinez. Singer-composer turned politician, Manuel Jimenez, of the PRM will now have the challenge to do good for Greater Santo Domingo’s most populated municipality.
The exception is Santo Domingo North. There, Rene Polanco of the PLD, will hand over to Carlos Guzmán, who belongs to the same organization.
In the case of the DN, current mayor David Collado, who came to the mayor’s office through a PRSC-PRM alliance, will hand over on Friday to Carolina Mejía, who is the general secretary of the PRM. Collado had campaigned for Mejía’s win.
Greater Santo Domingo has the most cases of coronavirus in the country. It is also where around 30% of the population lives. As of 19 April 2020 at 6pm, there were 2,175 PCR-diagnosed cases reported in Greater Santo Domingo, including 68 deaths. For the same date, the Ministry of Public Health said there were 5,044 confirmed cases nationwide.
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Hoy
El Dia
22 April 2020