A substitute judge at the Central Electoral Board (JCE) says that the civil registry officer who spoke out about the profiteering at civil registry offices should be praised and not reprimanded by the JCE, as reported in Hoy newspaper. Substitute judge and Central Electoral Board member Jorge Eligio Mendez Perez said that the members of the JCE wanted to penalize Luis Felipe Rodriguez for telling the press the truth over the weekend. Rodriguez, civil registry officer of the 12th Circumscription of Santo Domingo, said last weekend that historically the civil registry offices are institutions for the enrichment of the officers. He recommended that the JCE should instead assign them fixed salaries at sufficiently attractive levels for them to remain in the post. Mendez Perez said that the officers are feudal. He explained that in the past, civil registry officers were in the hands of the political parties, but that they now belonged to some of the JCE judges. He called the raffle “a genocide of economic interests that prevail in regards to civil registry officers”. Mendez Perez said that he was privy to information that all but one judge on the board had participated in a raffle of the civil registry officers to appoint people who would be loyal to him, as reported in Hoy newspaper. Mendez Perez pointed out that this means that the civil registry officers are subservient to their patrons and upon accepting jobs under those conditions will only serve the interests of those particular JCE officers. Mendez Perez is professor of law at PUCMM and UNPHU. He warned that while the officers are dependent on their patron, the law would not prevail, only the authority of the person who named them.<\/p>\n
Mendez Perez criticized the JCE’s negligence in permitting that in this day and age over two million Dominicans still do not have a legal identity, a situation that only increases poverty. He said that the money the JCE has spent on travel abroad could be used to resolve the major deficiencies that affect the country’s 158 locales.<\/p>\n
Instead of reprimanding Rodriguez for his statements, Mendez Perez considers that the JCE should send a letter of thanks to Rodriguez for the decent, conscientious and quality work he is carrying out in the Los Mina area of the province of Santo Domingo.<\/p>\n
He commented that during Juan Sully Bonelly’s presidency at the JCE a study was done to grant categories to the civil registry offices and establish wages accordingly. “But when they found out that this change would not yield profits for third parties, this was left without effect,” he explained. He proposes that wages should be fixed after the study is updated, to take into consideration the services and number of people served by each office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A substitute judge at the Central Electoral Board (JCE) says that the civil registry officer who spoke out about the profiteering at civil registry offices should be praised and not reprimanded by the JCE, as reported in Hoy newspaper. Substitute judge and Central Electoral Board member Jorge Eligio Mendez Perez said that the members of … <\/p>\n