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View Full Version : President's comment stirs debate



NewsWhore
11-25-2010, 02:40 PM
In reaction to President Leonel Fernandez's statement that "education is not just about money", leading political figures are calling for the application of the Organic Law on Education that orders the government to provide 4% of the GDP to the education sector.

Diario Libre reports that calls for amends came from PRD president Miguel Vargas Maldonado and one of the party's Presidential pre-candidates Luis Abinader. The PRSC and the Democratic Union Party also spoke out. Vargas Maldonado said that the PRD unreservedly supports the call being made from several quarters for increasing the Ministry of Education's budget because they believe that "this is not a question of debates, but rather the fact that the government party must comply with the many laws that it swore to uphold and it is not doing this". He said that the government was trying to distract society's attention from the quality of the education system, "when they cannot have quality education without adequate financing".

According to Abinader, the President's statements were unfortunate since it is his responsibility to assign the necessary resources to the education sector in order to execute the programs designed to strengthen education, including the Ten-Year Plan, approved as part of a broad-based consensus by the national educational community. "We are dealing with a poor argument that attempts to justify the non-compliance with the Organic Law on Education that assigns this sector 4% of the GDP or 16% of the National Budget", he said. The PRSC's Marino Bereguete joined the calls for increased funding for education and issued a call to debate the issue outside of politics.

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