Failure to control corruption has done “enormous damage” to Latin America

SANTO DOMINGO. The lack of control of corruption has made a “huge damage”To Latin America, allowing the access to the power of figures like Jair Bolsonaro, the current president of Brazil, who represents the right, concluded Ernesto Ottone, Chilean sociologist and doctor of Political Science by the University of Paris III, when addressing the issue of “Social movements in South America: Interpretations and Implications for the Dominican Republic".

In the academic activity organized by the Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC) and Seguros Reserva, with the objective of opening a dialogue between political parties and local analysts of regional reality, Ottone said that in Brazil the population voted for Bolsonaro for fear of crime and corruption.

When analyzing the Latin American context, the Chilean professor said that countries in the region face the growth of the informallabor d; he stagnation of the fall in inequality and the improvement of democracy, a fragile division of powers of the State, as well as the increase in crime and corruption.

"To the extent that democratic institutions do not control, do not fiscalize and are not alert, there will be more corruption," said Ottone, who said that in Latin American countries democracy has lost prestige, which will involve a huge political effort.

“It is not only the economy, it is also the political and the social, there is a culture of fear, there is a fall, a degradation of political activity, of the capacity for political reflection. Emotions occupy everything, they are part of politics and nobody can imagine a policy of laboratory, cabinet, it is also relationship, empathy and with that democracy have a very large debt with respect to their current development, ”argued the South American expert .

Ottone also noted that the extreme inequality that is evident in the countries of the region is incompatible with democracy. "Nothing forces democracy, preferableness has fallen and there is no cause, it is multicausal."

At the end of the Ottone conference, the panel "A vision of Dominican political leadership”, Moderated by the economist and communicator Javier Cabreja, in which the senator for Santiago participated, Julius Caesar Valentine; the member of the Central Committee of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), Melanio Paredes; and members of the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM) Geanilda Vázquez and Eduardo Sanz Lovatón.

Sanz Lovatón noted that in the Latin American societies there is a certain hypocrisy regarding politics and a false perception of political work. On your side, Melanio Paredes stressed that there is a obvious increase in corruption and a degradation of the quality of democracy, "The guiding thread of the popular insurgency is inequality and inequality," Paredes said, and gave as an example the recent cases of Haiti and Chile.

On your side, Geanildad Vásquez, talked about the need to establish control mechanisms and retake ideological aspects at the level of citizenship. "Currently there is no ideology, people do not believe in anything or anyone," he said, also criticized the creation of candidates for career, populism and the use of state resources, which in his opinion are factors that impact on very weak democracies.

While the senator Julius Caesar Valentine emphasized, politicians are challenged to react "If we don't change, they change us," he said, while stressing that social movements are political actors that influence citizens' decision-making.

INTEC and Seguros Reservan organized the day of analysis with the purpose of opening a dialogue between political parties and local analysts of the regional reality, to derive lessons that can serve to improve political, economic, social and institutional decisions in society Dominican The whole day was held in the Social Security Auditorium of INTEC.

Last Thursday the activity was attended by the last Director of Social Development of ECLAC, Martín Hopenhayn, followed by a panel of academics composed of Pedro Silverio, Rosario Espinal, Iván Gatón and José Luis De Ramón.