DOMINICAN POLITICS #37: LEONEL FERNANDEZ AND

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 SANTO DOMINGO 003971

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E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL DR
SUBJECT: DOMINICAN POLITICS #37: LEONEL FERNANDEZ AND
"FAILED STATES"

REF: 05 SANTO DOMINGO 3946


1. (SBU) Following is number 37 in our series on Leonel
Fernandez's first year in office:

Leonel Fernandez and "Failed States"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The "Failed States Index" published in the July/August issue
of Foreign Policy provoked a torrent of commentary in the
Dominican Republic throughout July and August, much of it
knee-jerk reactions and hot expressions of offended national
pride. The Dominican Republic appears as number 19 on a list
of 60 "insecure states, with varying degrees of vulnerability
to widespread civil conflict," based on a survey of tens of
thousands of media sources in 2003-2004, analyzed for 12
social, economic, political, and military indicators. Haiti,
ranked number 10, and Colombia, ranked 14, are judged more
vulnerable than the Dominican Republic, while Venezuela,
number 22, is slightly less so.

President Leonel Fernandez came out swinging, evoking and
denouncing far-fetched negative implications. Extemporizing
an address to a conference on July 13 to launch his national
anti-corruption strategy, Fernandez dealt only briefly with
the main theme and then plunged headlong into the "failed
states" issue. "We don't deserve that label," he asserted.
"The fact of having political volatility in a country, that
there is some instability. . . to say that it is a failed
state, which means a state in collapse or to say it more
clearly a nonexistent state, seems to me an exaggerated
characterization." A judgment with which we would agree, but
the article doesn't go that far. Fernandez said he would
instruct Dominican embassies worldwide to engage in
corrective public diplomacy.

Fernandez plunged into the enduring Dominican phobia: "And
because they link us with Haiti because it is also a failed
state, we want to say that there are no common solutions to
(the problems of) the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Haiti is
a distinct reality from the Dominican Republic." Applause.

His final leap went beyond the "failed states index" and any
available evidence: "But if by chance, and we raise it only
as a remote possibility, if the intention is that the
Dominican Republic is a failed state to be occupied, let it
be known that in no way would we permit the occupation of the
Dominican Republic." Standing ovation -- in an audience
included the United States Ambassador and representatives of
the UN and international financial institutions, all
remaining firmly in their seats. Since then, legislators,
academics, news editors, opinion editorialists, and Catholic
Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez have picked up the
banner.

Fernandez's declaration was read by many as
anti-United-States bravado, a reference to the two U.S.
interventions in the country during the 20th century. It was
cheap ex tempore braggadocio and in itself won him little in
this profoundly pro-U.S. country. The palace spokesman
issued a damage-control clarification the following day: the
President had in mind a possible intervention by a
multilateral organization such as the United Nations. Some
Dominicans wondered aloud whether Fernandez was beginning to
echo the rhetoric of Venezuelan President Chavez. Former
President Hipolito Mejia told the press that while he too
rejected the "failed state" label for the Dominican Republic,
the entire controversy over one journal article was overblown
and Fernandez's raising the specter of foreign intervention
was nonsensical ("un disparate").

Fernandez's remarks on Haiti - with subsequent official and
press commentary - may have undone some of the good will
earned by Foreign Minister Carlos Morales Troncoso during a
visit to the leaders of the Interim Haitian Government on
July 11. The day after Fernandez's remarks, Haitian Foreign
Minister Herard Abraham, at a meeting of Caribbean states
with EU representatives here, pointedly commented that the
international community generally favors joint development
projects between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and that
the Dominican-Haitian Mixed Commission had recently been
reactivated for this purpose.

On July 18, the palace's public affairs manager Carlos Dore
Cabral offered a more academic critique of the Foreign Policy
article. Dore accused the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, which publishes Foreign Policy, of
having a right-wing and partisan bias. He said that because
the study was based on media reports, its methodology was
flawed, lacking in participant observation, in-depth
interviews, and opinion surveys. Media sourcing distorted
the results on some of the indicators for the Dominican
Republic. The poorly defined indicator for emigration driven
by instability unfairly lumped the country with others
suffering from massive civil violence. Dore put a defensive
third-world spin on the issue by repeating a canard that has
been around since Balaguer's time: that the international
community has a secret plan to unite the Dominican Republic
and Haiti. Tough old socialist Euclides Gutierrez, senior in
the government but without very much to do, recently alleged
that this plot is designed to solve Haiti's problems while
forcing the Hispanic side of the island to bear a
disproportionate share of the burden.

Fernandez couldn't leave the topic alone. In his new Sunday
interview program, July 24, he went over all 12 criteria used
by the study, explaining why the results for the Dominican
Republic were incorrect or misleading. This kept the
discussion alive in the papers. One commentator in El Caribe
acquainted herself with Foreign Policy magazine and told
Dominican readers that they shouldn't feel specially singled
out -- the journal had been even more harsh against the U.S.
government and its policies in the Middle East.

Rafael Toribio, one of the leading thinkers at the
USAID-supported NGO "Participacion Ciudadana," summarized the
debate in an August 6 article titled, "Failed, Inefficient or
Irresponsible." He reminded readers that the media soundings
had been carried out in the worst moments of the 2003-2004
economic crisis. Even the strongest critics had admitted the
existence of national problems related to the criteria and
could lead to deterioration; and even a failed state is not
subject to intervention unless it threatens vital interests
of others. Many, including the President, had confused the
notion of a "failed state" with that of a "failed government"
-- in Toribio's opinion, the blame for a "failed state" lies
not only with a government but with the political failures of
an entire society. Privileged and ruling classes are
particularly at fault.

And then Toribio put his finger directly on the wounds: more
than 50% of Dominicans live in poverty, he wrote, and as many
as a third of the population is in extreme poverty; at the
same time, the country is marked by one of the highest
disparities in income distribution in Latin America, "already
the most unequal region of the world." Public services are
abominable; a recent Gallup poll suggested that on average,
Dominicans complete only the 5th grade and primary
instruction averages only 2 hours and 37 minutes a day.
Government expenditure on public health services and
education is only half of what the law stipulates should be
spent on education alone, and of that amount, 80 percent goes
into salaries. Only with the arrival of the new millenium
did the government manage to establish a system of social
security and pensions, which still struggling. Of the active
population, 16 percent are unemployed and 54 percent are
working in the informal sector; 54 percent of the active
workforce has no more education than four years of
(Dominican!) primary school. Other problems are the
uncertain supply of electricity, chronic since the 1970's;
unquantified Haitian immigration and emigration of a million
Dominicans; the growth of crime and violence; the delays of
justice, extrajudicial killings, and five decades of growth
that failed to achieve the potential of national endowments.

"Perhaps," he commented, "A state that has permitted such a
situation has not yet failed - - but it stands accused, at a
minimum, of being inefficient and irresponsible."


2. (U) Drafted by Bainbridge Cowell, Michael Meigs.


3. (U) This piece and others in our series can be consulted
at our SIPRNET site
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/wha/santodomingo/ along with
extensive other material.
MEIGS