Dominican political analyst Rosario Espinal, in an op-ed piece in Hoy newspaper on 18 October 2017, writes on how corruption and lack of professionalism have affected Dominican institutions since the 31-year Trujillo regime, through the 22-year government of Balaguer, the 12-year PRD government to the present 17 years of PLD government.
“The 17 years of PLD government have been a perpetual disagreement between the discourse of modernity and the repeating of dire political policies of the past: corruption, political patronage and caudillismo, hindering the development of democracy and the economy,” writes Espinal, who is also a sociology professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, USA.
“Currently, the Dominican state is caught between the demands of the ruling PLD’s own political clientele and those of its allied parties to continue the illegal distribution of public resources. With so much time in power and accumulated robberies, corruption scandals proliferate,” she writes.
She alerts that these robberies today have become the main threat to overthrow government legitimacy. She says that neither President Danilo Medina, nor the president of the PLD, nor its Political Committee have caught on with precision to the magnitude of the problem. “They assume that as since there are so many people involved in corruption, they can look the other way, and from their positions of power they ignore or justify the scandals, and at best, take lukewarm measures. They, instead of being part of the solution, are part of the problem,” she writes.
Espinal forecasts that if action is not taken, the PLD will collapse. “At present, the tentacles of corruption have spread everywhere, and robbery has become modus vivendi in Dominican society under the auspices of the state,” she says. She alerts that if the PLD from its top management does not take firm action against corruption, it will die.
She warns: “No government is immune to collapse, however precarious the opposition. In a crisis of legitimacy, some ‘savior’ will appear, even if he later becomes an oppressor.”
Espinal says that “stealing, like all human vices, is addictive”. She forecasts that the scandals will become more alarming and frequent. “The excesses of corruption are becoming increasingly bizarre and disgusting; and the sloppiness with which the system of impunity has been organized is becoming horrifying,” she writes.
She writes that the situation is for all to see and the list is long and known: Super Tucanos, OISOE, CEA, CORDE, Odebrecht, OMSA, etc. etc.
“All this corruption and the deaths are responsibility of the PLD. “They can no longer cover the sun with one finger, nor use Juan Bosch as a cloak.”
Read more in Spanish:
Hoy
19 October 2017
