Father Jorge Cela, executive director of the Center for Social Studies Juan Montalvo, said that it is an inadmissible attitude and shameful that the government feels it had to pay delinquents so that these abstain from protesting against the government. He was commenting on President Leonel Fernández’s justification of the PEME program that made pay offs primarily to known potential troublemakers. The priest said that what is most sad is that it has been a practice common amongst almost all governments that have administered the country, which is not a justification, either. Former President Fernández said in his speech yesterday that he funded the program as he saw two alternatives to achieve social peace: brutal repression or the pay offs. (see http://www.dr1.com/daily/news112800.shtml)
