El Dominicano
en USA -
The news today
is that U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has postponed his trip to the Dominican
Republic this week to return to Washington from Chile for meetings with the
Ukrainian prime minister on Wednesday, March 12. That is unfortunate, because
senior official attention is needed on the growing political problems there.
On the surface, the Dominican Republic appears to be
stable, with a fairly popular government attempting to do right by its people.
Behind that image, however, are disturbing political trends that U.S.
policymakers should not overlook.
A compelling argument that all is not well with
Dominican democracy is in a recent report by
the Center for Strategic and International Studies: "The Dominican
Republic: Becoming a One-Party State?" That report argues that undue
manipulation by the ruling Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) which controls the
executive, legislative, and judicial branches is "fundamentally
threatening the country's democratic institutions."
The report argues that the ruling party uses these
advantages to create a system "rigged" in "the PLD's
favor." The systematic effort to ensure the PLD's domination is led by the
ambitious former president, Leonel Fernández, and abetted by current President
Danilo Medina.
The state of the opposition Dominican Revolutionary
Party (PRD) is also examined. The PRD remains fractured since its chairman,
Miguel Vargas, struck a deal with the PLD to endorse that party's recent
political reforms. PRD members contend that Vargas has abandoned his role as
opposition leader and is cooperating with the PLD for his own personal ends. Indeed, one remarkable bit of
evidence of Vargas's questionable actions is that he refused to support his own
party's presidential candidate in 2012, Hipólito Mejía, to whom Vargas had lost
the PRD nomination.
Vargas's critics allege that he has made a pact with
Fernández to subvert the PRD from within in exchange for political power and
economic favors from the government. Although they have been trying to remove
him and restore their party's opposition status, they have been thwarted by
arbitrary rulings by the PLD-controlled judiciary and electoral tribunal. In
effect, PLD leaders have hijacked the opposition by defending Vargas and
preventing authentic PRD activists from reclaiming their party.
There are convincing examples in the public record to
raise doubts about Vargas's probity. In a WikiLeaked cable,
the U.S. Embassy in the Dominican Republic attributed Vargas's vast wealth to
"shady dealings." In 2013, he was accused in
sworn testimony of receiving $300,000 in political contributions from convicted
drug trafficker José Figueroa Agosto, known as the "Pablo Escobar of the
Caribbean." The accusations were made to Dominican authorities by
Figueroa's former girlfriend, but investigation of the charges has stalled.
Vargas's credibility suffered another hit this year
when a newspaper revealed
that he had received a sweetheart $15 million loan from the PLD controlled
government bank; the newspaper quoted senior PRD leaders as saying that the
loan was "approved in record time" and in violation of the entity's
regulations." PRD representatives claim the loan was a reward to Vargas
for his service to Fernández's interests during the 2012 presidential election.
The United States has an interest in helping
Dominicans strengthen democracy and the rule of law, spur economic growth, and
improve the lives of all their citizens. Vice President Biden can advance these
objectives if he speaks candidly about undemocratic machinations that serve
corrupt politicians' ambitions but hurt the people and country those
politicians are supposed to serve.
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