HolaDR.com: Everything About The Dominican Republic!

First and foremost, I am a born and raised Dominican who loves my country probably as much as many others do.  The reason I started blogging about DR is because I am truly passionate about my country and all it has to offer, not only to the tourist who go visit for a week or two, have a blast, help the hoteliers get richer, and then go back home.  But also, what the country has to offer to every single Dominican even though many of them, even well educated Dominicans take for granted.  I thank all of you who have visited my country and spent a wonderful time there.  Thanks to you guys, many Dominicans have a place to call home and something to eat.  Going back to the question, why Dominicans are so corrupt? This is an article that is not targeted to the typical Dominican citizen, but politicians.  It hurts me to see all over the web and publications how corruption is so widespread in the country, that  I feel the need to vent a bit and try to make some kind of sense of this non-sense going on in the Dominican Republic from generation to generation.
But, before I go on, I think is a good idea to get the definition of corruption straight.  According to Wikpedia, this is what I found:

Corruption may refer to:

• Putrefaction, the decomposition of recently-living matter. Other meanings of the term use this as a metaphor.
• Political corruption, the dysfunction of a political system or institution in which government officials, political officials or employees seek illegitimate personal gain through actions such as bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, patronage, graft, and embezzlement.
  • Political corruption is a specific form of rent seeking (not to be confused with property rental), where access to politics is restricted by limited transparency, limited competition and domination of narrow interests.
  • Political corruption tends to be more extensive in developing countries, where safeguards such as a well-paid, merit-based civil service, investigative journalism, and other accountability mechanisms aren’t well developed.
• Corporate corruption, the abuse of power by corporate managers against shareholders or consumers.
• Data corruption, an unintended change to data in storage or in transit.
• Linguistic corruption, the change in meaning to a language or a text introduced by cumulative errors in transcription as changes in the language speakers’ comprehension.

It is important to pay attention to the definition herein of Political Corruption. I highly agree that is clearly more excessive in developing countries where safeguards such as well-paid, merit based civil service, investigative journalism, and other accountability mechanisms aren’t well developed.  It is sad but true that the Dominican society is so haunted by corruption as the American society is so haunted by negligent consumerism which is one of the reasons the American economy is suffering right now.  However, that will be a different subject.
As Dominicans, we are born in a particularly corrupt society and corruption has become part of our culture.  It is important to understand that it is a learned habit.  “If this guy did it with no consequences, why can’t do it.” I am 36 years old, and I do not recall any time during my short life, where corruption has not been present in the Dominican political system. In fact, there have been more corrupt politicians than non corrupt ones in office.  The problem with corruption exists everywhere, even in developed countries.  I am not trying to say otherwise.  Corruption, is however more prominent in Latin American countries where the means or accountability mechanisms are almost vanished.  The saddest part about all this is that our resources as a country and as a society have been squeezed by the greed of people who we have entrusted to guide and help the country succeed for future generation to call and be proud to say ‘I am Dominican”.  Corruption in DR will continue to put in jeopardy our potential to progress as a county.  I am happy to see a new generation emerging thanks in part to technology and the ease of diffusion of information.  More and more Dominicans are more aware of the wrongdoings of corrupt politicians and business people who will do anything to enrich themselves with disregard of their actions and consequences.  My idea on how to combat corruption in DR:

1.      Promote and continue to exercise free speech and distribution of information amongst all Dominicans: This new generation of professionals who are emerging should wake up and see that if we do not put a stop to the never ending vicious cycle of corruption, the country will never be more than a playground for develop countries tourists who happily enjoy the weather and our beaches, that most of the time are far from reach to the typical Dominican citizen.  Nothing more!

2.      Scrutinize the political system and the election of our politicians: Unfortunately, the Dominican political parties have become some sort of gangs by which they come in set up their campground for several years, do as they please with the countries resources, enrich themselves, and perform their exit strategy leaving the country deeper in the hole with a never ending burden that will be aggravated by the next party in office.

3.      Establish a grass root movement to divulge information, educate people, and promote transparency in the government: freedom of speech is worthless if the majority of the Dominican citizens are ignorant or unaware of the wrong doing of their elected officials.  There is a strong need to have a solid and well supported group of people who truly care about change for the country.

4.      Election for public office by merit rather than your associations or social background:  This is a major problem in the Dominican society where those in public offices get there because of their social background (who you know) rather than what you know and what you can offer to the development and progress of the organization.  This one of the biggest drawbacks in the Dominican political arena.  If every elected official would get elected by merit rather than social background, corruption will not disappear but some noticeable progress may surface if it is sustained.

5.      No tolerance for corruption attitude: I believe this is one of the most difficult things to do since corruption is so widely accepted and encrusted in the Dominican society.  If all cases of corruption were to be prosecuted to the maximum consequences, sooner or later corrupt politicians will think twice before playing with the country’s resources.

6.      Pay according to your abilities: It saddens me to learn how the majority of Dominicans Medical Doctors live in poverty.  It is insane how many Dominicans have a big title position with lots of responsibilities and their salaries barely allows them to have a decent standard of living.  The same goes for civil servants.  If a doctor lives in poverty, how do you think a police officer lives?  He is supposed to protect you.

I know that there are probably many more ideas that will help alleviate and end corruption in the country but these are the ones that come to my mind right now.  The Dominican Republic, as many people call it, “paradise” , is a country with so many things to offer its people because its people is the richest resource it has.  If the Dominican society learns how to manage and abolish corruption, the sky suddenly will become the limit for many of us.