Shoving, pepper spray in second anticorruption protest

Santo Domingo.- Pushingand shoving, shouts and tension reigned Wednesday when several groups protestedagainst corruption cases of the State WorksSupervisory Engineers Office (OISOE) .

Amid the melee agentsdoused pepper spray in the eyes of Modern Revolutionary Youth (JRM) leader MarcosValdera, according to witnesses, and was taken to a nearby hospital.

Crowd controlbarriers were installed on all streets around the OISOE offices, in front ofthe National Palace to control the protest, the second against OISOE in as manyweeks, demanding indictments of the currentand former officials linked to the scandal uncovered in the wake of the suicideof contractor David Rodríguez in one of OISOE´s bathrooms.

The coordinator ofthe group Poder Ciudadano (Citizen Power) Manuel Robles said they communicated their planned protest to authoritieslast Monday, but found that numerous riot police had cordoned off all routes,forcing them to gather at the corner of Mexico Av. with Dr. Delgado street.

"Unfortunatelywe couldn’t get to where we had planned to form a human chain, which is simplyto hold hands in a sign of unity and firmness against these thieves that stolethepeople’s money," Robles said.