Santo Domingo.- The country’s corrupt repartition of political booty continues 10am Thursday in the hotel Dominican Fiesta, where 155 mayors will choose the next head of the Dominican Municipal League(LMD), with veteran politico Johnny Jones the only one seeking the post born from proverbial political pacts in smoke-filled rooms.
But the day before the election, some political leaders as well as officials say the LMD should be closed, and its nearly RD$700.0 million yearly budget distributed among the country’s smaller and most needy municipalities and townships.
Among the politicians who prefer closing the LMD because it doesn’t carry out any important function for the municipalities figure the mayors Roberto Salcedo (National District), Juan de los Santos (Santo Domingo East) and Francisco Peña (Santo Domingo West), who’ve previously told the media that the LMD discounts 5% of the funds in their budgets without providing them any type of service.
For the Democracy Alliance Party (APD), its public rejection of the LMD includes allegations of cronyism by ruling party as well as opposition leaders, and asks the transfer of the League’s function of technical training, to universities and specialized educative centers.
The APD said by closing the LMD the political class would send citizens a positive signal of more transparency, uprooting partisan practices of corruption and cronyism.
For 12 consecutive years political leader and Altagracia province senator Amable Aristy ran the LMD as a personal entity, resulting from conjuncture agreements between his minority political organization PRSC, with his opposition PRD and ruling PLD parties