NewsWhore
07-12-2006, 03:11 PM
The Que se dice column on page two in Hoy newspaper today refers to one of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's works, Una Muerte Anunciada/Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and calls the paragraph "a Mockery foretold". The paragraph deals with the current impasse between government negotiators and the transportation unions over the cost of fares in cities and suburban areas. The writer says that just as on other occasions, the transport unions have scoffed at the government's attempts to regulate the fares. Each union has upped fares with an "Olympic disdain" for the rules set out by the OPRET - the Office for the Reorganization of Transport - which called for a one-peso increase in local and suburban fares. The episode has served to show, once more, that the transport unions are their own bosses in this country, and there is no way to force them to heed the government's wishes which are supposed to benefit the general population, except by threats of blackmail and extortion. Governments from 1961 to the present day have invested billions of taxpayer's pesos in the transport sector. And that "dust" as the saying goes, has produced today's "mud", with the added inconvenient fact that now there is no one in the government who can cut off the head of this monster created by the demagoguery and political complacency in this and all former governments.
Almost as if he had read the Que se dice column, OPRET chief Diandino Pena called on the unions to respect the deal they supposedly made with his office. According to Diario Libre, the situation could change over the next few hours as Pena has told the unions that unless they heed the agreement the government will not honor several of its commitments, such as payment of a debt, a fare subsidy and others. Pena called the one-peso fare hike and the government's promises a "joint obligation". Bus fares went from RD$12 to RD$15 instead of RD$13 as had been agreed on last Saturday. Some inter-city bus fares jumped by RD$10, a move that was denounced by the Dominican Student Federation (FED).
Link To Original Article (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#3)
Almost as if he had read the Que se dice column, OPRET chief Diandino Pena called on the unions to respect the deal they supposedly made with his office. According to Diario Libre, the situation could change over the next few hours as Pena has told the unions that unless they heed the agreement the government will not honor several of its commitments, such as payment of a debt, a fare subsidy and others. Pena called the one-peso fare hike and the government's promises a "joint obligation". Bus fares went from RD$12 to RD$15 instead of RD$13 as had been agreed on last Saturday. Some inter-city bus fares jumped by RD$10, a move that was denounced by the Dominican Student Federation (FED).
Link To Original Article (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#3)