In an op-ed piece published in Diario Libre on Monday, 25 June 2018, former National District prosecutor and presidential candidate in 2016 general election for Al Pais, Guillermo Moreno recalls the reasons why shortly after the end of the 2004-2012 term of former President Leonel Fernández, he sued former President Leonel Fernandez, his former Public Works Minister Víctor Díaz Rúa, and his former director of the Office for Supervisory Engineers of State Works (OISOE) Felix Bautista for corruption during those years.
At the start of the Medina administration in 2012, Economy Minister Temístocles Montas had estimated the Fernandez governments had left a fiscal deficit of US$187 billion. Montas had attributed this to unbridled wasteful government spending, mentioning big wages, per diem, advertising and propaganda, unjustified subsidies and excess investments in non-priority infrastructures.
He recalls that on 5 May 2012, Acento.com.do had published a report in which it was noted that Fernandez had traveled 70 times abroad, for 392 days and accompanied by official committees made up of 1,556 persons spending US$49.1 million on those trips from 2004-2012.
He recalls the World Economic Forum listing of the Dominican Republic among top ranked for wasteful government spending, and how the DR is listed as a champion of corruption in the world.
He observes some cases of infrastructure carried out by Felix Bautista when he was head at OISOE: remodeling of the National Library. The original budget was for RD$88.8 million and this became RD$1.40 billion once completed. The construction of the High Tech Building at the UASD that started out as a RD$283 million project and tended up costing RD$1.47 billion.
Also mentioned is how former Minister of Public Works Víctor Díaz Rúa spent RD$29.87 billion or 76.6% of the annual budget in only five months. Among the works Moreno publicly complains about are: Coral Highway that started out with a budget of RD$403 million and ended up costing R$1.8 billion. The Canca La Reina-San Víctor (Moca) road that was budgeted for RD$7.33 million and ended up costing RD$196.9 million.
Moreno is critical of former attorney general Francisco Dominguez Brito who did not appeal a case of corruption that a court ordered filed. Moreno says that Dominguez Brito used the argument that he had great respect for the former President.
He concludes:
“When you see the same corrupt politicians of yesterday, now once again candidates for public office, and see the persistence of a Public Ministry and Judiciary without independence and see the continuity of impunity and, above all, perceive the impotence of a citizenship that is fed up, one can only cry out “Oh God”, “How long is the road! Until when will this be!”
Read more in Spanish:
Diario Libre
27 June 2018
