Santiago mayor calls ruling party colleagues ‘lab rats’
Santo Domingo.- The mayor of Dominican Republic’s second biggest city on Thursday railed against his own party, the ruling PLD, and described some of his colleagues as "lab rats" paid to slander him.
Santiago mayor Abel Martínez denounced a "treacherous paid campaign" which alleges that he supports next Sunday’s anti-corruption march in downtown Santo Domingo.
"There are sectors within our party that promote tendencies, lies and blackmail, which don’t assimilate when internally the party has told them not to; who don’t assimilate that things are going well in Santiago, a clean city and in the process of organization and administrative transparency, where the mafias that existed in this City Hall have been eliminated," said Martinez, a member of the PLD’s top echelon, the Political Committee.
"It’s an invention and nonsense of great magnitude that I am supporting the march. There are lab rats paid to defame and attempt against our honor. We have very good relations with the media, but we cannot let this pass, because many of those things are sponsored by PLD which the Political Committee internally and the Government have not been able to stop," Martinez told Z101-FM by phone.
The former president of the Chamber of Deputies called on the Political Committee to halt the actions against morals, law, principles and statutes. He said there are forces within the PLD that are not in harmony with the desire of the government or the party, "but they’re entrenched."
He criticized the Political Committee’s failure condemn the shooting death of one the PLD members during its convention in Santiago. "It’s time to act so that other regretful cases don’t occur.