President Luis Abinader has joined dozens of other nations in his condemnation of the Russian invasion of neighboring Ukraine as ordered by the ex-KGB operative and current head of the Russian state, Vladimir Putin. Listin Diario reports on other times when a Dominican statesman has taken a stance or even action against another head of state.
After Pearl Harbor in 1941, Rafael Trujillo, then officially the “Benefactor of the Fatherland” (but not the President) was in New York City, and he called on the National Congress to authorize the Executive Branch to declare war on Japan. This, of course, they did, and President Manuel de Jesus Troncoso did just that. Franklin D. Roosevelt sent his congratulations. The results were swift, and not pleasant: German U-boats sank every Dominican merchant vessel on the seas with heavy loss of life.
In 1969, Trujillo approved the attempted assassination of Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt, using car bombs. The plot failed and Trujillo was identified as being behind the plot, causing international disgrace.
During the reign of Francois Duvalier (Papa Doc), there was a kidnapping attempt on his children. The subsequent investigation indicated that an officer named Francois Benoit was the ringleader. Benoit sought asylum in the Dominican Embassy in Petionville, but Haitian troops surrounded the embassy, even going inside the grounds. Then-President Juan Bosch called this action an insult and the same as an invasion of the Dominican territory. With the Dominican army grouped on the border, Duvalier withdrew the troops.
When the Dominican Constitutional Court released its Resolution 168 in 2013 that clarified who could be a Dominican citizen in much clearer terms, this was attacked by the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves. This attack took place at the Cariforum Conference of the ACP Caribbean nations. The Dominican Ministry of Foreign Relations rejected this accusation of racism. The big blow came when then-President Danilo Medina took to the podium at the Summit Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean States in 2014, where Medina told Gonsalves to go and govern the Grenadines and stop trying to govern the Dominican Republic. Subsequently, the Dominican Republic would desist from its efforts at joining Caricom and became part of the Central American trading bloc.
Abinader’s comments will undoubtedly bring consequences, especially in tourism. Russia is a major soure of tourists for the Dominican Republic.
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Listin Diario
28 February 2022