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NewsWhore
04-29-2010, 02:10 PM
The United Nations Development Program National Coordinator in the DR, Miguel Ceara-Hatton writes today in Clave that there is a distortion in the way that Dominicans evaluate government officials. "In the Dominican political system people think development is about things," he writes. He explains that this kind of thinking extends to Presidents and even city mayors. "The population justifies the construction of things by saying 'at least they are not robbing the money' even when the expenditure is many times its cost and benefits the politicians," he writes. This is accompanied by a decline in public services in general, and social exclusion. "To build things is not development. People develop. Development is improving the quality of life of people," he writes, stressing that development is not buildings, GDP or computers.
"In fact, there can be more GDP and more things with more inequality and poverty, with more corruption, with a greater lack of respect to the law, with fewer institutions, an increased presence of drug trafficking, with destruction of the environment, and ignorance and poor health," he writes.
www.clavedigital.com/App_Pages/opinion/Firmas.aspx?Id_Articulo=17492 (http://www.clavedigital.com/App_Pages/opinion/Firmas.aspx?Id_Articulo=17492)

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