El yipeton

[NewsWhore]

The name is Dominican slang for "luxury SUV", a play on words meaning "big jeep". In his "Que Se Dice" column in Hoy, Claudio Acosta describes what he calls the "plunder of the Dominican state." He mentions how many people have been outraged by the news that the mayor of Santiago, Gilberto Serulle, served as guarantor for the purchase of 42 "yipetones" valued at around RD$2 million each for the city councilors, despite touting the financial precariousness of the Santiago city council. "Criticism aside, what happened there is just the fulfillment of an unwritten rule of the public administration, whether involving officials appointed by decree or elected by popular vote that seems to be that every public servant must have a good and comfortable vehicle, and there is no government official without a yipeton, or no yipeton without an official. All this despite the fact that there are a bunch of schools on the verge of collapse and that citizens are still being killed while demanding electricity or road repairs," he writes.

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