Dominican Republic 2001
Yearbook 2001
Dominican Republic. A major corruption scandal shook the Dominican Republic during the year; Former President Leonel Fernández is suspected of embezzling public funds. Fernandez, in turn, accused the government of conducting a systematic persecution campaign aimed at preventing his intended candidacy in the 2004 presidential election. Another former president, Salvador Jorge Blanco, has already been sentenced to court for corruption but pardoned.
In March 2006, the government’s adviser on narcotics issues, Marino Vinicio Castillo, came up with a series of statements that sparked controversy. Castillo suggested during a meeting with police officers that the political parties, the military and almost all government institutions are directly or indirectly linked to the trafficking of drugs. He further added that this problem had worsened during the Mejías government. International observers point out that the Dominican Republic has evolved to act as a bridgehead for the smuggling of drugs from South America to Europe, as well as North America.
- Abbreviationfinder: lists typical abbreviations and country overview of Dominican Republic, including bordering countries, geography, history, politics, and economics.
The religious organization, Solidaridad Fronteriza, declared in April that Dominican military people charged bribes to allow smuggling goods and Haitian emigrants to cross the Haiti-Dominican Republic border. The organization provided photos as evidence. Army Chief of Staff, Major General José Ricardo Estrella Fernández immediately stated that he would initiate an investigation into the allegations.
During the first 3 months of 2007 trade between Cuba and Dominican Republic increased by 32%. It was against this background that trade representatives from both countries met in July in Santa Domingo to coordinate joint trading activities. That same month, governments in Cuba, Dominican Republic and Haiti decided to begin coordinating their environmental policies.
President Fernández found the presidential election in May 2008 with 53% of the vote. Fernández was chosen to build a metro in Santo Domingo, and its operation started in January 2009.
PLD’s Danilo Medina won the presidential election in May 2012 with 51.2% of the vote. PRD’s Hipólito Mejía had to settle for 47.0%. Mejía claimed that the election had been fraught with fraud, but OAS election observers rejected that claim. Granted, they had observed individual cases of voting, but in general the voting results corresponded to the votes cast. Medina won on a program that prioritized social programs and education over infrastructure.
Due to the economic development of the country, many emigrants have been applied to the Dominican Republic. There are 30,000 from Jamaica, about 10,000 from Puerto Rico and 700,000 from Haiti. But the Dominican Republic is a strongly racist society, and although there are Haitian-born Dominicans who were born and raised in the Dominican Republic, the Constitutional Court issued in September 2013 an order under which these Dominicans are considered emigrants without a residence permit, and therefore not have the right to education or health. The court considers them stateless. The order stated that everyone born in the Dominican Republic after 1929 without having at least one Dominican parent was to be considered illegal or in “transit”. In October 2014, the Constitutional Court’s ruling was rejected by the Inter-American Human Rights Court IAHCR, calling on the Dominican Republic to respect human rights. The government immediately threatened to pull the country out of the IAHCR, and on November 14, the Constitutional Court issued a new order stating that the country’s accession to the IAHCR in 1999 was on a legally wrong basis and therefore illegal.
Population 2001
According to Countryaah, the population of Dominican Republic in 2001 was 9,097,146, ranking number 87 in the world. The population growth rate was 1.440% yearly, and the population density was 188.2711 people per km2.
