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UNCLAS SANTO DOMINGO 000862 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR WHA, WHA/CAR, WHA/EPSC, INR/IAA, EB, EB/IFD/OMA, 
; USSOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD; TREASURY FOR OASIA-J LEVINE; 
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USDOC FOR 3134/ITA/USFCS/RD/WH; DHS FOR CIS-CARLOS ITURREGUI 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ECON EFIN PGOV DR
SUBJECT: DOMINICAN POLITICS II #18 - FERNANDEZ'S 
INDEPENDENCE DAY SPEECH TRUMPETS ACCOMPLISHMENTS 
 
 
¶1. Following is #18 in our series on the second year of the 
presidency of Leonel Fernandez. 
 
Fernandez Independence Day Speech Trumpets Accomplishments 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
 
In a vigorously optimistic Independence Day speech before a 
joint session of Congress on February 27, President Leonel 
Fernandez, and by extension the ruling PLD, took credit for 
what Fernandez suggested was the country's complete economic 
recovery. 
 
Fernandez opened with a dense presentation of Central Bank 
statistics on GDP growth, improved exchange rates, decreased 
inflation, and restructured foreign debt, presented as major 
accomplishments since the start of his second administration. 
 He laid out evidence of a recently improved economy in 
minute detail, down to numbers of vehicle imports and 
registration (broken down by cars, buses, and motorcycles), 
imports of electric appliances, and even consumption of 
chicken and pasta (not necessarily together). 
 
Once past the statistics he evoked the challenge of 
globalization, with a capsule history of trade agreements, 
emphasizing the administration's intention to see CAFTA-DR 
implementation in July of this year.  "To get the true 
advantages of this international trade agreement, we in our 
country will have to be effective in the design and 
application of a national strategy for competitiveness."  He 
listed eight sectors or activities for such a strategy and 
then recounted a shaggy-dog story from the book by trade 
consultants Michael Fairbanks and Stacey Lindsay concerning 
their lengthy sleuthing effort to identify reasons that 
Colombian leather goods were not internationally competitive 
-- winding up with blaming Colombian cows for scratching 
themselves on barbed wire.  "The mystery was solved; the low 
quality of leather wallets from Colombia was due to the fact 
that their cows were stupid. . . but let us now blame the 
cows for our own deficiencies." 
 
He opened a short surveyh of international relations with the 
declaration, "We have magnificent relations with the United 
States and with our neighbors of Central America and the 
Caribbean." 
 
On Haiti, he said, "With our closest neighbor, Haiti, we hope 
that with the new government of President-elect Rene Preval 
we will conduct a special relationship that will permit us 
jointly to advance a common agenda on issues of migration, 
security, the border, trade, public health, educational and 
cultural exchanges, and protection of the environment, among 
others." 
 
His defense of the much-derided Metro transportation plan was 
painstaking and image-laden, redolent of the duality of 
Fernandez' personality as both visionary and technician. 
Citing the benefits of mass transit, including reduced 
reliance on fossil fuels, and comparing the objections of 
opponents to those who rejected Paris' Eiffel Tower, 
Fernandez commented that there are always those who oppose 
"all that signifies advancement and progress." 
 
His discussion of efforts to reform the electricity sector 
wound up dwelling on the decision to award contracts for the 
construction of two 600-megawatt coal-fired power stations, 
one in the northwest and the other in the southeast, at a 
cost to private investors of more than USD 1.2 billion, 
projects that are scheduled to take 3 years and create 
directly more than 2000 jobs.  The forecast electricity 
tariff rate will be 5 U.S. cents per kilowatt hour -- a rate, 
Fernandez commented pointedly, that would be far below the 
eleven cents provisionally negotiated with generators in the 
defunct Madrid Agreement of 2001.  His linkage of the rates 
reinforced for the Embassy the implication that these 
projects are intended at least in part to force existing 
generators to give in to the administration's repeatedly 
declared efforts to get them to renegotiate their contracts. 
 
Fernandez dealt with security by noting that the country's 
homicide rate of 21.6 per 100,000 is below those of Brazil, 
Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, El Salvador and Colombia (the 
highest, at 102).  He briefly described plans to provide 
greater neighborhood security.  For public works he named, 
one by one, 25 completed projects and 37 more in progress. 
An equally lengthy enumeration covered spending on social 
issues, health, education and culture.  He wound up with a 
census of administrative and legal reforms, culminating in 
his issuance of a presidential decree laying out guidelines 
for government purchases of goods, service, construction and 
concession (not mentioning that the decree comes into effect 
only upon June 1, two weeks after congressional elections). 
 
 
The Impact 
---------- 
 
The impact of this message varied widely with the listener. 
Partisan supporters raved. Opposition leaders publicly 
declared the speech to be "good, optimistic, moderate, 
prudent, decent, and well-structured" (a view shared publicly 
by the Ambassadorand by Papal Nuncio Msgr. Timothy Broglio), 
lower ranking politicos and press critics took the 
opportunity to push divergent agendas. 
 
In reply to Fernandez's assertion that the general populace 
is feeling the effects of an economic improvement he is 
stewarding, daily Diario Libre skewered the speech and his 
use of previously released statistics as "little more than 
Marketing for Dummies."  In a different "state of the nation" 
address in the pastoral letter of the Conference of Catholic 
Bishops, Bishop of Santiago Msgr. Benito de la Rosa y Carpio 
commented that half of all Dominicans are "slaves to poverty." 
 
Senate President Andres Bautista Garcia of the opposition PRD 
made an obligatory early salvo in the election campaign, 
suggesting that a far less rosy picture would be painted 
should one ask the Dominican people the true state of the 
nation, especially considering high prices of cooking gas and 
electricity.  Bautista lined himself up with Alexandre Dumas 
and other detractors of the famed Tower by asserting that the 
Metro shouldn't be one of the country's priorities given the 
current economic crisis, especially as the Metro would 
benefit no more than 10 percent of the country's population. 
  Bautista dismissed the entire affair as simply a speech 
"delivered in the heat of an electoral campaign." 
 
Well before the speech Bautista had reacted to Fernandez's 
declarations to a partisan crowd about the "tyranny of the 
majority," blaming Congress for blocking executive 
initiatives and inadequately funding key projects.   During 
the formal presentation of government audit accounts, 
Bautista had insisted that Congress acts unequivocally in the 
national interest "without political opportunism."  In his 
patrician style, he had directly challenged Fernandez, saying 
that "denigrating statements" from the President, such as the 
claim that Congress was attempting to institute a 
"dictatorship of taxes," arose from the electoral campaign, 
not from anything the President could possibly believe. 
Fernandez, the Man 
------------------ 
 
Despite his own obvious political spin, Bautista is correct 
in at least one regard -- this speech did occur in the early 
stages of the political campaign for the May 16 congressional 
and municipal elections. 
 
One telling point is Fernandez' inclusion of such a spirited 
defense for the Metro, a high profile, risky, and in our view 
frankly dubious public works project.  In a country where 
electricity delivery is chronically deficient, where border 
control is nearly nonexistent, and where health, education, 
and welfare indicators point to below average achievement, 
Fernandez persists in his insistence that high-tech, costly 
measures that will directly benefit only a small portion of 
Dominican society.  We understand that he has told Metro 
coordinator Diandino Pena that he wants to step on board the 
first Metro train in May, 2008 (just in time for presidential 
elections). 
 
Is Fernandez attempting to divert the public's attention from 
systemic problems he cannot solve in short order?  Probably 
not.  Rather, the President is a real futurist, a true 
believer in poverty eradication through technological 
advancement.  With his logic and command of detail he 
considers that any problem is conquerable with the right 
plan. There are many who are uncomfortable with pursuit of 
modernization without early increases in investment in 
health, education, and security infrastructure. 
 
 
¶2.  Drafted by Michael Garuckis, Michael Meigs 
 
¶3. This piece and others in our series can be consulted at 
our SIPRNET web site at 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/wha/santodomingo< /a> 
 
KUBISKE