President Hipólito Mejia, admitting that a decree cannot modify a law, corrected his error in January, as newspaper reports revealed over the weekend. Reportedly, he sent to the Senate on 23 January a law that gives legality to what he proposes in two earlier decrees. The subject of controversy is the separation of an area of the National Park of the East for hotel development. Ecologists and hotel operators in the area have protested the separation of the two beach portions (20A and 24A) for their reported future sale to an Air Europa affiliate for the construction of 1,200 hotel rooms. The construction of the hotel is protested on grounds that it would affect the fragile bird and fauna breeding areas of Bayahibe (24 hectares) and La Magdalena (415 hectares) in the province of La Altagracia and the cave of Jose Maria with its 1,200 pre-Columbus time pictographs. The Park of the East dates back to 1975 and was reaffirmed by President Mejía government only two days after entering office with Environmental Law 64-00 of 18 August 2000. But now President Mejia favors the development of the areas on grounds that tourism development is compatible with the ecology. "You can have mountains, rivers and hotels, but we do nothing having Indian pictographs in a cave if tourists do not visit the cave," said Mejia. Mejia has been enfatic that tourism development is a priority of his administration. The January bill incorporates the content of decrees 657-00 of 30 August 2000 and 7 November 2000, which could be contested for lack of legality. News sources say that the Ministry of Environment was not consulted prior to issuing the decrees. The Senate announced that the bill will be studied on Wednesday. Probably at that time the opinion of the Ministry of Environment will be heard. In addition to opposition by ecologists and hotel operators in the area, the owners of adjacent property that continues to be part of the National Park of the East oppose the bill. The owners do not oppose the development. They oppose that only a part of the jointly owned property has been benefited by the exclusion from the National Park where tourism development is banned. Lawyer Victor Livio Cedeño, son of one of the original owners of land adjacent to lot 20A, says that this would be fraud against all the other owners of the lot 20 that was expropriated in 1975 by the Balaguer government to create the National Park of the East. The other owners are the defunct company Casino Union Higueya, Elmudesi & Co., Jose Armenteros & Co., Jorge Hazim Hnos. & Co., Rafael Maria Gatón, Francisco Roldan and Pedro Rolando Cedeño. (5 March 2001)
