Alianza País presidential candidate, former prosecutor Guillermo Moreno writes in Diario Libre that President Danilo Medina is the President that has most increased the national debt, since the days of dictator Ulises Hereaux at the end of the 19th Century. He writes: “Today the debt is over US$42 billion or 53 % of the GDP. In the last seven years, in debt service alone, the country has paid US$14.34 billion. The payment of interest on the debt already represents 24% of tax revenues.”
He said the high levels of corruption inherited from the Leonel Fernández governments have increased during the Medina administration. He writes that because of investigations by the justice in the United States, Brazil and Switzerland the Odebrecht cash for contracts case are being tried in the country. He explains that the case directly involves the Medina government in bribes, overvaluation of works, and illicit financing of electoral campaigns. Moreno writes that the attorney general was named to ensure impunity for the echelons of the ruling PLD party.
According to Moreno, since 2013, the country is allotting 4% of GDP to pre-university education. He writes that the quality of education has not improved. He reports: “To get an idea of the great fiasco that all this public investment in the so-called “educational revolution” has meant, one only has to examine the results of the evaluation that the Ministry of Education made in May 2018 of 159,000 sixth-grade students. In it, students reaching the satisfactory level were only 4.10% in mathematics; 15.63% in Natural Sciences; 17.97% in Social Sciences; and 27.37% in Spanish Language.”
He adds: “In reality, the large sum allocated to education represents a new portfolio for corruption in the purchase of plots of land, construction of schools, food suppliers, expendable material, bulging payrolls, among others. It is no coincidence that after the application of 4% of GDP to the Ministry of Education, of its three past incumbents so far, two are running as pre-candidates for the Presidency for the official party.”
Moreno is also critical of Medina administration efforts to improve justice, control migration at the border with Haiti, crime and public health.
He concludes: “The rehabilitation of Danilo Medina, as soon as it would be possible for him to return in 2024, would keep him as the political leader of his faction and of the PLD. In the immediate term, this would strengthen the fact that, in the remaining year of his government, Danilo would use the resources of the state to influence the outcome of his party’s primary, and then that of the general elections to back the candidate who most guarantees his return in 2024. The ruler who emerges in these conditions will be a puppet president of Danilo Medina. The Trujillo dictatorship provided several such examples.”
For President Danilo Medina to be rehabilitated, the 2015 Constitution needs to be reformed. To do so, the Medina faction of the PLD needs the vote of the Leonel Fernández faction of the party and that of opposition legislators.
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Diario Libre
6 August 2019