CORRECTED COPY: DOMINICAN POLITICS #33: DOMINICAN

UNCLAS SANTO DOMINGO 003556

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: DR PGOV
SUBJECT: CORRECTED COPY: DOMINICAN POLITICS #33: DOMINICAN
REPUBLIC -- AS A FAILED STATE, ACCORDING TO FP


1. (SBU) The following is number 33 in our series on the
first year of Leonel Fernandez's administration.

Does the sum of the parts add up? Or has the journal
"Foreign Policy" lost its mind?

A comment from an Embassy colleague, July 5:

I arrived home last night after two weeks of leave. On the
trip and at arrival I encountered nothing out of the
ordinary. When I arrived home my wife called me and said
that she had read that "Foreign Policy" listed the Dominican
Republic on its first annual "failed states" index. I was
surprised.

On the ride home I had asked my cab driver if there was
anything noteworthy in the news. He mentioned the President
had been traveling, but that was it. No mention that the
state had failed while I was away. When I downloaded the
list (see below) I was astonished that not only was the
Dominican Republic high on the list, number 19, but that it
was the third highest ranked nation in the hemisphere --
behind Haiti (#10) and Colombia (#14),two countries
experiencing ongoing civil violence.

A country's score in this exercise is determined by an
aggregation of 12 indices, scaled 1-10. The Dominican
Republic's highest score was for "deterioration of public
services," for which it received a 9.6 out of possible 10.
That score was worse than all of the countries above it (or
below it, depending on point of view) on the list except
Somalia (a perfect 10 as it is not a functioning state),
Haiti (9.8),and North Korea (9.7). Amazingly, Liberia
scores an 8.2 in this measure -- a country that has not,
according to "The Economist," paid civil servants in years.

The next highest (worst) score for the Dominicans is a 9.2 on
the measure of "rise of factionalized elites." This score is
equal or higher than several countries that are convulsed in
full-blown civil wars and that have UN peacekeepers keeping
the "factionalized elites" from killing each other.

Another black mark was a Dominican score of 9.2 on the
measure of "widespread violation of human rights." Everyone
agrees that human rights protection can be improved here.
But of the top 19 countries, the Dominican score is a number
higher than those for the others except top ranked
(worst-ranked) Cote d'Ivoire. Yes, the index implies, based
on score, that respect for human rights is worse in the
Dominican Republic than in North Korea, a country with
verifiable gulags, and worse than in several countries that
have recently experienced full-blown genocides.

I have spent considerable time studying social sciences and,
I understand that when constructing a list such as the one in
"Foreign Policy" one cannot possibly be an expert on all of
the countries on it. But having lived in the Dominican
Republic for the past year, it seems inescapable to me that
many of the indices for the Dominican Republic are patently
absurd. If so, then "Foreign Policy" and the Carnegie
Institute for Peace should completely revamp the methodology
for constructing the "failed states" list.

On the other hand, if "Foreign Policy" is right, then the
Department of State should reexamine whether the current
hardship differential of 20 percent accurately reflects the
fact that we are living in a state teetering on the brink of
failure.


2. (U) Research and drafting by Daniel O'Connor.


3. (U) This piece and others may be consulted on our SIPRNET
site, http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/wha/santodomingo< /a> along with
extensive other material.
HERTELL