Protests signal Dominicans´ mounting mistrust of their President

Santo Domingo.- Once againantiriot police kept at bay several social organizations which tried on Wednesdayto stage the third anticorruption protest outside the State SupervisingEngineers Office (OISOE) in as many weeks.

The latest demonstrationand the police response could signal a concerning turn in the OISOE scandal,which has revealed president Danilo Medina´s total disregard for thepopulation´s repeated calls to clean up his Administration.

Local media reportthat the police even kept the protesters from leaving the area as late as8:30pm, a move which prominent journalist Marino Zapete to describe as akidnapping by the government headed by president Danilo Medina.

The Citizen Power Collectiveasked the protesters to form a human chain in front of OISOE to demand thatMedina dismantle the agency fraught with scandals of corruption, and whichreached a boiling point when government contractor David Rodriguez took his ownlife inside the building located in front of the National Palace.

Rodriguez´s relativessay the recently fired director Miguel Pimentel Kareh and Jose Florencio headedan extortion ring that allegedly demanded kickbacks from governmentcontractors.

The alleged policemistreatment came despite a Supreme Administrative Court (TSA) ruling which orderedthe Interior and Police Ministry to refrain from impeding the protest.