Archbishop calls on political parties in Dominican Republic to come up with common plan to save country

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Mar 1, 2007 / 11:00 am

The president of the Bishops’ Conference of the Dominican Republic, Archbishop Ramon Benito De La Rosa y Carpio, is calling on the country’s political parties to draw up a “common agenda” in order to save the country, which he said is being overrun by drug trafficking.

During the Te Deum for the 163rd anniversary of the country’s independence, Archbishop De La Rosa asked political parties to put the interests of the nation above their own. Otherwise, he warned, true solutions to the country’s ills will not be the priority, and that would bring “negative consequences” for the nation.

“When monarchy was not the answer for the people, they sought out democracy.  Democracy is what we desire if we want to live in harmony,” he went on.  “But if democracies become weak, people look to dictatorships, as we had with the resurgence of the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, which was a weakness at the beginning of the 20th century,” the archbishop recalled.

Today more than ever, he continued, the Dominican Republic needs honest men who say no to “lying politicians who deceive when they say they are serving the country and all they think about is themselves and their own personal interests.”

Archbishop De La Rosa also urged that “the army of drug traffickers” that has invaded the country be combated.  “Drug trafficking has occupied us in the same way that foreign forces occupied us in the past.  It’s not drugs that are invading the country, it’s an army of drug traffickers that is invading,” he pointed out.

The archbishop called on Dominicans to celebrate this year’s anniversary by reflecting on the social ills that are affecting the country and are preventing it from moving forward.