With the coordination of the Dominican Society of Dailies (SDD), meetings are ongoing to hone the recently enacted Law 1-24 that creates the National Intelligence Agency (DNI). The law seeks to provide government with a better tool to combat crime. The new security entity falls directly under the Presidency and is an intelligence powerhouse, overriding other government entities. The proposed amendments will be presented to President Luis Abinader for his consideration.
The actions come after several ambiguous articles in Law 1-24 raised concern the law could be abused. Legal recourses have been submitted to the Constitutional Court for violation of people’s constitutional rights.
Others proposed the pending ruling of Law 1-24 resolve the ambiguities that detractors fear could lead to violations of rights people enjoy today.
President Luis Abinader is backing the talks after the SDD warned that Law 1-24 violates rights such as freedom of expression, intimacy, privacy and the protection of personal data and information.
The controversial law underwent a series of rounds of talks at the conference rooms of local dailies. Keeping to his style of responding to public demand, President Abinader empowered a newly created SDD committee to make recommendations. The first meeting took place at the El Nuevo Diario where Persio Maldonado, president of the SDD, is the executive editor.
After the second round at the Listin Diario newspaper on Tuesday, 30 January 2024, the working committee said it was ready to work on the draft.
On Tuesday, legislators, officials of the DNI, journalists and business sector representatives had met at the Listin Diario with lawyers to help unravel the best way to deal with the law. Participating in the Tuesday meeting were ombudsman Pablo Ulloa, investigative journalist Nuria Piera and Servio Tulio Castaños, executive vice president for the Fundación Institucionalidad y Justicia (Finjus). Participating for the Dominican Society of Dailies were its president Persio Maldonado (executive editor of El Nuevo Diario) and vice president Aníbal Castro (president and executive editor of the Diario Libre), and SDD legal advisor Manuel Tapia Lopez.
The law first had passed in the Senate and then on 29 December 2023, on the last day of sessions, it was fast-tracked with the vote of a majority of government and opposition legislators. Then the bill returned to the Senate and passed in the Senate on 10 January 2024, moving to the Presidency where it was signed into law.
Read more in Spanish:
Diario Libre
Listin Diario
El Caribe
Noticias SIN
Diario Libre
El Jaya
31 January 2024