President Hipolito Mejia rallied for the votes of Protestants in the Dominican Republic yesterday, with promises to equalize the privileges to Protestant Church leaders with those already granted to the Catholic Church made at a campaign event held yesterday at the Dominican Fiesta Hotel. Together with Vice-Presidential candidate Rafael Subervi Bonilla, President Hipolito Mejia announced the government would grant facilities for the Protestants to operate radio stations nationwide, with the Protestant churches receiving tax exemptions for the import of sound equipment. Government property where protestant churches, clubs, and homemakers? committees are located will be legalized in their names if it can be proven they have been in place for at least 10 years, as reported in the Listin Diario.
El Caribe furthermore says that during the event, President Mejia presented the president of the Senate, Jesus Maria Vasquez (PRD-Maria Trinidad Sanchez), with a bill that would legalize weddings officiated by Protestant ministers. Another bill would institute a special income tax regime for Protestant churches, thereby allowing them to receive the same treatment as the Catholic Church. The statesman said he issued a decree to create a committee to select Protestant chaplains for jails, for work in the governmental health sector and so that they may be admitted into the military ? a dispensation previously left to Catholic Church clergymen only. (For example, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in the Dominican Republic, Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez, holds a general?s status in the military ranks.)
President Mejia also announced the issuance of a decree to create a Voluntariado para la Conservacion del Medio Ambiente, a pro-environmental committee that will be presided over by Reverend Georges Reynoso.
President Mejia argued that he is matching the rights of Protestants with those of the Catholics because he believes in freedom of religion. ?I do not fear the interests that are involved. I have never trembled when making decisions to resolve difficult situations,? said Mejia.
The announcement comes on the heels of leading spokesmen of the Catholic Church being especially critical of the Mejia administration this year.