POLITICS/TRADE-DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Locals Show Little Interest in ACP Summit

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Wesley Gibbings

SANTO DOMINGO, Nov 25 1999 (IPS) - Despite considerable media hype and an unprecedented network of security measures for this weeks meeting of 71 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states, Dominicans are displaying little interest in, but much suspicion about, the proceedings planned for Thursday and Friday at a specially converted wing of the building housing the Ministry of Armed Forces.

Television call-in programmes have been receiving mixed reviews from a public sceptical about the political designs of the ruling Partido de la Liberacion Dominicana (PLD) which faces the polls on March 16 next year.

ôIt is taking us twice the time to move from place to place,ö one taxi driver moaned. ôI think it is all about politics.ö

For sure, the Leonel Fernandez administration has pulled out all stops to ensure that the second ACP Summit leaves delegates with more than the bitter-sweet prospect of agreement on a way forward for the 24-year-old grouping.

When Fernandez took office in 1996, the country was already in the throes of a chronic trade deficit that had reached 1.6 billion dollars in 1994 and the residual impact of a near collapse in 1990 when international creditors suspended credit to the country.

Official despatches prepared for this meeting however now stress several statistical turn-arounds including economic growth of 7.3 percent last year and a projected figure of 6.5 percent in 1999.

Gains are also being cited in the area of foreign investment which reached 730 million dollars during the course of the year, according to a report prepared by the Bureau for the Promotion of Foreign Investment (OPI).

ôDuring the last years,ö says a government press release, ôthe Dominican Republic has suffered a positive evolution in its investment climate due to the existing political stability and macroeconomy.ö

This, the release says, ôhas aroused the interest of mulitinational corporations in different areas of production, who are analysing and evaluating the status of foreign investments in view of establishing themselves in the country.ö

ôWhatever they say,ö one hotel worker told IPS, ôthe poor will remain poor and the rich will grow richer.ö

Officials within the confines of the Domincan Fiesta Hotel are however more optimistic that the meeting of ACP heads will help create the circumstances for tackling problems of social inequity within the grouping of largely under-developed and developing countries.

ôThere were no contentious issues as far as that was concerned,ö one Caribbean official said.

During their last Summit in Libreville, Gabon in 1997, the ACP heads acknowledged that ôrampant poverty, social exclusion and marginalisation are overriding scourges that affect a large number of our countries.ö

ôEradication of the causes of poverty, attainment of food security, and the need to integrate all sections of our population into the mainstream of political, economic and social life remain the top priority of our development efforts,ö the Libreville Declaration said.

With close to 21 percent of the population living under the poverty line and unemployment in the region of 16 percent, the Dominican Republic would not consider itself among the least of the ACP apostles.

But there is universal recognition of the need to improve the plight of the average Dominican.

When he took office, Fernandez introduced a reform package aimed at re-generating the flagging agricultural sector and preparing Dominican industry for more competitive conditions.

Measures including increases in sales taxes and gasoline price rises generated considerable political heat and more than once invoked the spectre of the PLDs slim hold on office.

In 1996, Fernandez had entered into a somewhat controversial alliance with the Reformist Party of former President Joaquin Balaguer in order to beat back a strong challenge from Jose Francisco Penas Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) which won 48.75 percent of the votes

cast in the elections. The PLD won 51.25 percent.

Now, on the eve of what has already become a keen election campaign, the ruling party is hoping that smooth sailing over the next few days will translate into easier going over the next four months.

For the most part, though, Dominicans are hardly seeing the difference between the two activities.