ENG 1101 LC31 Fall 2018

New rum in old bottles

BEFORE winning the Dominican Republic’s presidential election in May, Danilo Medina promised to “continue with what works, fix what is wrong and do what has never been done before”. At his inauguration on August 16th, he fleshed out those promises. He plans to reverse a rise in violent crime with a thorough overhaul of the police, almost to double spending on education and to cut the proportion of Dominicans in poverty from 34% to around 20%. He also pledged to crack down on widespread corruption and eliminate chronic power shortages.

But Mr Medina may find it hard to turn good intentions into achievements. He is a protege of Leonel Fernandez, who ruled the country for 12 of the past 16 years (and whose wife, Margarita Cedeno, is Mr Medina’s vice-president). Mr Fernandez presided over rapid economic growth and a big fall in inflation, while building many new roads and a metro in Santo Domingo, the capital. His energetic personal diplomacy raised his country’s profile abroad.

Mr Medina has left much of the economic team in place. Their first task will be to deal with a budget deficit approaching 4% of GDP. There will be fewer public works, but more spending on social programmes and security.

But there is a darker side to Mr Medina’s political inheritance. Foreign watchdogs say the Dominican Republic is one of the most corrupt countries in Latin America. So it is unfortunate that many officials are to remain in their jobs. They include the interior minister and police chief. That casts doubt on Mr Medina’s promise of police reform, which is urgently needed. Assaults, robberies and murders have been rising. When the local police called headquarters during a bank robbery in Moca, a town in the north, last month they found the line disconnected for non-payment.

Optimists welcome the appointment of a respected attorney-general and also Mr Medina’s choice of Gustavo Montalvo as his chief of staff. Mr Montalvo resigned from a government ethics committee in 2005 in protest at lack of progress in fighting corruption. Mr Medina could achieve many of his goals by pruning the public sector, which is stuffed with party hacks, and redirecting spending to less wasteful ends. That would indeed be “to do what has never been done before”.