US embassy cable - 05SANTODOMINGO3971

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 SANTO DOMINGO 003971 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
DEPT FOR WHA/CAR, INR; NSC FOR SHANNON; USCINCSO ALSO FOR 
POLAD; TREASURY FOR OASIA-MAUREEN WAFER; USDA FOR FAS; 
USDOC FOR 4322/ITA/MAC/WH/CARIBBEAN BASIN DIVISION; 
USDOC FOR 3134/ITA/USFCS/RD/WH; DHS FOR CIS-CARLOS ITURREGUI 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, DR, Dominican Politics 
SUBJECT: DOMINICAN POLITICS #37: LEONEL FERNANDEZ AND 
"FAILED STATES" 
 
REF: 05 SANTO DOMINGO 3946 
 
1.  (SBU) Following is number 37 in our series on Leonel 
Fernandez's first year in office: 
 
Leonel Fernandez and "Failed States" 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
 
The "Failed States Index" published in the July/August issue 
of Foreign Policy provoked a torrent of commentary in the 
Dominican Republic throughout July and August, much of it 
knee-jerk reactions and hot expressions of offended national 
pride.  The Dominican Republic appears as number 19 on a list 
of 60 "insecure states, with varying degrees of vulnerability 
to widespread civil conflict," based on a survey of tens of 
thousands of media sources in 2003-2004, analyzed for 12 
social, economic, political, and military indicators.  Haiti, 
ranked number 10, and Colombia, ranked 14, are judged more 
vulnerable than the Dominican Republic, while Venezuela, 
number 22, is slightly less so. 
 
President Leonel Fernandez came out swinging, evoking and 
denouncing far-fetched negative implications.  Extemporizing 
an address to a conference on July 13 to launch his national 
anti-corruption strategy, Fernandez dealt only briefly with 
the main theme and then plunged headlong into the "failed 
states" issue.  "We don't deserve that label," he asserted. 
"The fact of having political volatility in a country, that 
there is some instability. . . to say that it is a failed 
state, which means a state in collapse or to say it more 
clearly a nonexistent state, seems to me an exaggerated 
characterization."  A judgment with which we would agree, but 
the article doesn't go that far.  Fernandez said he would 
instruct Dominican embassies worldwide to engage in 
corrective public diplomacy. 
 
Fernandez plunged into the enduring Dominican phobia:  "And 
because they link us with Haiti because it is also a failed 
state, we want to say that there are no common solutions to 
(the problems of) the Dominican Republic and Haiti.  Haiti is 
a distinct reality from the Dominican Republic."  Applause. 
 
His final leap went beyond the "failed states index" and any 
available evidence:  "But if by chance, and we raise it only 
as a remote possibility, if the intention is that the 
Dominican Republic is a failed state to be occupied, let it 
be known that in no way would we permit the occupation of the 
Dominican Republic." Standing ovation -- in an audience 
included the United States Ambassador and representatives of 
the UN and international financial institutions, all 
remaining firmly in their seats. Since then, legislators, 
academics, news editors, opinion editorialists, and Catholic 
Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez have picked up the 
banner. 
 
Fernandez's declaration was read by many as 
anti-United-States bravado, a reference to the two U.S. 
interventions in the country during the 20th century. It was 
cheap ex tempore braggadocio and in itself won him little in 
this profoundly pro-U.S. country.  The palace spokesman 
issued a damage-control clarification the following day: the 
President had in mind a possible intervention by a 
multilateral organization such as the United Nations.   Some 
Dominicans wondered aloud whether Fernandez was beginning to 
echo the rhetoric of Venezuelan President Chavez.  Former 
President Hipolito Mejia told the press that while he too 
rejected the "failed state" label for the Dominican Republic, 
the entire controversy over one journal article was overblown 
and Fernandez's raising the specter of foreign intervention 
was nonsensical ("un disparate"). 
 
Fernandez's remarks on Haiti - with subsequent official and 
press commentary - may have undone some of the good will 
earned by Foreign Minister Carlos Morales Troncoso during a 
visit to the leaders of the Interim Haitian Government on 
July 11.  The day after Fernandez's remarks, Haitian Foreign 
Minister Herard Abraham, at a meeting of Caribbean states 
with EU representatives here, pointedly commented that the 
international community generally favors joint development 
projects between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and that 
the Dominican-Haitian Mixed Commission had recently been 
reactivated for this purpose. 
 
On July 18, the palace's public affairs manager Carlos Dore 
Cabral offered a more academic critique of the Foreign Policy 
article.  Dore accused the Carnegie Endowment for 
International Peace, which publishes Foreign Policy, of 
having a right-wing and partisan bias.  He said that because 
the study was based on media reports, its methodology was 
flawed, lacking in participant observation, in-depth 
interviews, and opinion surveys.  Media sourcing distorted 
the results on some of the indicators for the Dominican 
Republic.  The poorly defined indicator for emigration driven 
by instability unfairly lumped the country with others 
suffering from massive civil violence.  Dore put a defensive 
third-world spin on the issue by repeating a canard that has 
been around since Balaguer's time: that the international 
community has a secret plan to unite the Dominican Republic 
and Haiti.  Tough old socialist Euclides Gutierrez, senior in 
the government but without very much to do, recently alleged 
that this plot is designed to solve Haiti's problems while 
forcing the Hispanic side of the island to bear a 
disproportionate share of the burden. 
 
Fernandez couldn't leave the topic alone.  In his new Sunday 
interview program, July 24, he went over all 12 criteria used 
by the study, explaining why the results for the Dominican 
Republic were incorrect or misleading.  This kept the 
discussion alive in the papers.  One commentator in El Caribe 
acquainted herself with Foreign Policy magazine and told 
Dominican readers that they shouldn't feel specially singled 
out -- the journal had been even more harsh against the U.S. 
government and its policies in the Middle East. 
 
Rafael Toribio, one of the leading thinkers at the 
USAID-supported NGO "Participacion Ciudadana," summarized the 
debate in an August 6 article titled, "Failed, Inefficient or 
Irresponsible."  He reminded readers that the media soundings 
had been carried out in the worst moments of the 2003-2004 
economic crisis.  Even the strongest critics had admitted the 
existence of national problems related to the criteria and 
could lead to deterioration; and even a failed state is not 
subject to intervention unless it threatens vital interests 
of others.  Many, including the President, had confused the 
notion of a "failed state" with that of a "failed government" 
-- in Toribio's opinion, the blame for a "failed state" lies 
not only with a government but with the political failures of 
an entire society.  Privileged and ruling classes are 
particularly at fault. 
 
And then Toribio put his finger directly on the wounds: more 
than 50% of Dominicans live in poverty, he wrote, and as many 
as a third of the population is in extreme poverty; at the 
same time, the country is marked by one of the highest 
disparities in income distribution in Latin America, "already 
the most unequal region of the world."  Public services are 
abominable; a recent Gallup poll suggested that on average, 
Dominicans complete only the 5th grade and primary 
instruction averages only 2 hours and 37 minutes a day. 
Government expenditure on public health services and 
education is only half of what the law stipulates should be 
spent on education alone, and of that amount, 80 percent goes 
into salaries.  Only with the arrival of the new millenium 
did the government manage to establish a system of social 
security and pensions, which still struggling.  Of the active 
population, 16 percent are unemployed and 54 percent are 
working in the informal sector; 54 percent of the active 
workforce has no more education than four years of 
(Dominican!) primary school.  Other problems are the 
uncertain supply of electricity, chronic since the 1970's; 
unquantified Haitian immigration and emigration of a million 
Dominicans; the growth of crime and violence; the delays of 
justice, extrajudicial killings, and five decades of growth 
that failed to achieve the potential of national endowments. 
 
"Perhaps," he commented, "A state that has permitted such a 
situation has not yet failed - - but it stands accused, at a 
minimum, of being inefficient and irresponsible." 
 
2.  (U) Drafted by Bainbridge Cowell, Michael Meigs. 
 
3.  (U)  This piece and others in our series can be consulted 
at our SIPRNET site 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/wha/santodomingo/  along with 
extensive other material. 
MEIGS