2000 – Page 163

The country’s elected mayors met in Santiago this week to create the National Municipal Federation (FNM). Thirty mayors, including those from some of the nation’s largest municipalities convened in Santiago’s city hall. According to Hector Grullon Moronta, Mayor of Santiago, the group is needed in order to speak with a single voice on behalf of …

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All 10,000 copies of a novel dealing with life under the regime of Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo were sold out last week. The first Dominican printing of La Fiesta del Chivo (The Goat’s Party), by Peruvian writer and one-time presidential aspirant, Mario Vargas Llosa, disappeared from bookstore shelves in a single day. The book, …

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The 14th and final concert in a series titled "Once Upon a Time Merengue" will be staged in the Plaza de Espa?a in the Colonial City tonight. The event features celebrated "merenguero" Sergio Vargas, who has toured the country offering this pastiche of the evolution of the national dance. The series, which is sponsored by …

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Under red three inch letters spelling the word "Panic!" an article in El Siglo reports that the Juan Pablo Duarte Olympic Sports Complex, has been taken over by thieves and delinquents. According to the article, victims have complained that the park almost totally lacks illumination, and that young hoodlums conceal themselves behind bushes near the …

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The government has made budgetary provision for DR participation in the Olympic Games, to be held in Sydney, Australia next August, and in the Pan American Games, to be hosted by SD in 2002. The Olympic Committee’s chairman, Jose Joaquin Puello announced that in "an agreeable conversation, the president guaranteed the resources not only for …

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Throughout neighborhoods of Santo Domingo, black ash fell yesterday afternoon due to fires that consumed sugar cane fields east of the city. Clouds of acrid smoke forced the suspension of classes in some schools in SD’s eastern sectors of Sabana Perdida, Los Mina, Ambar, and Ozama, while housewife’s rushed to remove freshly laundered clothes from …

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The Association of Commercial Banks (ABCRD) wasted no time in responding to charges by PRD presidential candidate Hipolito Mejia that the government has negotiated more than DR$1 billion in "illegal" loans. Jose Manuel Lopez Valdes, president of the organization, stated that "we are strictly respectful of the law." If we had violated it by making …

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Speaking at the Wednesday luncheon of the American Chamber of Commerce, Hipolito Mejia demanded to know what the Fernandez administration has done with RD$140 billion (around US$8.75 billion) which, he contends, it has collected while in office. "I don’t know what they spent so much money on, " he said to his prestigeous audience of …

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The PLD party, which this week was charged with violating the campaign ethics agreement, has asked for "fairness and balance" from the group that faulted it. Jose Tomas Perez, the party’s Secretary General, said that the report of the Followup Commission of the Electoral Ethics Pact (CSPEE) was one-sided when it attacked the PLD’s lack …

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