Top official slams Dominican presidential candidate’s trip to Sinaloa

Santo Domingo.- The president of the Ethics Commission on Monday questioned the visit to Mexico’s beleaguered region Sinaloa by opposition PRD party presidential candidate Hipolito Mejia, “right in the middle of his campaign for the Presidency.”

Marino Vinicio Castillo, who compared the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel to ex Army captain and drug trafficking convict Quirino Paulino in their interest in major agribusinesses, said upon his return, Mejia should provide a complete list of where he went and whom he met with in Sinaloa, where his campaign affirms he went to attend an agribusiness convention.

“Quirino was a distinguished agro businessman of the South, Mejía is visiting farms where most of them are owned by cartel members, just six months ago after President Fernandez travels to Santiago, will his security heightened and says that the Sinaloa cartel, represented by the murder convict El Indio Cespedes Martinez, is present here, and oh my god, and Mejía goes over there in the middle of this.”

He said the people who’re meeting with Mejía in Sinaloa, in the places he could go, are people who are linked to many crimes. “This is the worst time for a presidential candidate to go to Sinaloa, even if it’s a supposed agribusiness fair.”

“The Sinaloa Cartel aims to create a state of in-governance, it’s the last place he should be visiting, why is a Dominican candidate interrupting his campaign for four days. What’s he doing there in that place, I don’t like it,” Castillo said.

Interviewed by Luis Mejia on Colorvision Channel 9, the Ethics Commission President said the cartels take up spaces of power and Dominican Republic is now seeing their influence after the US tightened the grip on their borders. “Even in (ex Mexican) President Fox’s house they had a representative, the ex Minister of Justice, and we, as the result of the Merida Initiative, are getting the worst of it.”