Caribbean & Central America - 14 December 2004

The government will launch a 'plan for democratic security' in January 2005. President Leonel Fernández said as much but no more on 30 November during his first public address since he was inaugurated. One thing that seems certain is that the plan will involve in some shape or form the increased involvement of the armed forces in domestic security. 

Fernández, who devoted most of his speech to his government's success (so far) in turning around the economy, said that violence and the crisis in the electricity sector were the two biggest threats to the country's future. 

Rising violence
A campaign against violence was launched in Santiago in early December. The campaign - 'Por un Santiago Seguro' - is led by monseigneur Ramón Benito de la Rosa y Carpio. In the four months since August 2004, a total of 107 people have been murdered and a further 144 injured in Santiago. Most of the murders are linked to drug-related violence. 'There are police officers that need to be investigated,' de la Rosa said. The Cardinal Archbishop of Santo Domingo, Nicolás de Jesús Cardenal López has also entered the debate. He said that there should be a thorough purge of the police force to make way for new young recruits. 

The government is trying to do something about this. It has ordered a cleanup of the police force, following revelations of corrupt practices that included the appropriation of cars recovered from thieves. It has also changed the police hierarchy again: General Tomás Holguí­n la Paz, who was only appointed as police commissioner on 18 August 2004, was replaced by General Francisco Antonio Pérez Vásquez on 6 December.

The army
The use of the armed forces to contain rising violence is a controversial issue in the Dominican Republic as it is across Latin America. It raises concerns that the government is blurring the distinction between the role of the military and the police. Even before the release of Fernández's new plan, soldiers are already beginning to play a more active role in domestic security in the Dominican Republic. The government announced on 8 December that some 200 soldiers and 800 police officers will be deployed in and around the principal tourist resorts in the Dominican Republic until early 2005. The announcement followed a series of attacks on tourists in late November and early December. The armed forces are now escorting buses from Dominican airports to resorts following the recent holding up of a tourist bus by four hooded men in Punta Rusia (Puerto Plata), in the north of the country. The army is also assisting the police to patrol crime hotspots to tackle the rise in violence.

The importance of tourism was underlined in November by the release of statistics by the tourism secretariat showing that earnings from tourism are expected to amount to some US$3.4bn in 2004. The number of visitors to the Dominican Republic should increase in 2004 by 5% on 2003 to 3.4m, confirming the tourism sector, which accounts for 24% of GDP, as the country's main source of hard currency inflows. Remittances from Dominican expatriates are worth slightly less than tourism earnings: they should come to US$2.7bn this year the IDB reckons. A separate threat to tourism in the Dominican Republic is malaria. More than 2,000 cases have been reported in 2004, a 31% increase on 2003. Many of these have been reported in the province of Altagracia, a major tourist centre. More than 20 foreign tourists have contracted the disease since October 2004.