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NewsWhore
03-19-2008, 05:40 PM
Today's Diario Libre page two editorial, written by editor Adriano Tejada, says that if any proof was needed about the famous CB payrolls, it has been given by former PLD party activist lawyer Pedro P. Yermenos Forastieri in an article published in El Nacional newspaper. Yermenos comments in the opinion piece on the government's decision to put party leaders (Base Committee members) on the national payroll. This irregular use of taxpayer money was denounced by journalists Marino Zapeta in his radio program and blog and Nuria Piera on her radio and TV talk shows. Yermenos now reveals that the scandal that the journalists have brought into the open was the last straw that led him to resign from the PLD in September 2007after 30 years as a member. At the time he said he was resigning to protest against the fact that the party had distanced itself from the ideals of its founder Juan Bosch. Yermenos now explains that he had been watching what he describes as the party's "progressive degeneration". He said that the deciding moment came when he was told he too would receive a check as a party leader.
In his commentary, he recalls the evening when a party member showed up with a list of party Base Committee members who were not working in government, and announced that as of the 30th, they would be assigned a check as a reward for their party membership. His own check was in that allotment.
See http://www.elnacional.com.do/article.aspx?id=41654
In today's Diario Libre editorial, newspaper executive editor Adriano Miguel Tejada writes that the problem is how to put an end to this if here poverty has been perpetuated as a way of keeping people dependent on gifts; a bag of food, a little box of foodstuffs or the small check. This is an age-old, deep-rooted problem. Pedro Francisco Bono, a noted 19th century statesman wrote in the 1880s: "That 'blue' of today, for example, who is thrown out of a job or the pension he is enjoying, will be 'red' tomorrow, and that 'red' of yesterday, to whom they give said job or pension, at once becomes 'blue'. (Opinions of a Dominican, 13 January 1884). Tejada ends by saying that politics based on money will not permit us to get out of the hole we're in.
Marino Zapete tells the story of the Base Committee allocations in a blog entry, "Cuantas Botellas, Profesor" at www.jarabedemarino.blogspot.com (http://www.jarabedemarino.blogspot.com)

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