#domicanrepublic

Dominican Republic is currently mourning democracy and mourning the people’s trust. Our trust in the electoral system and what was left of the trust in our government.

Now, I know all of these are really harsh statements, and you don’t have to take this from me (a tumblr blog dedicated to writing fics), you can definitely search for information on your own, but they’re all true.

To give you some context: They implemented the generalized automated vote, something that’s not even used in Germany (as a first world example) because it is so easy to commit fraud with it.

Also, we’ve had presidents from only one (1) political party for the past 16 years. And they have 28/32 people on the senate.

Our municipal elections, meant to happen this past February 16th 2020, were cancelled while thousands of people were still on the line to vote. Something that has NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE in like, the history of democracy, except once: in Haiti, on an hurricane red alert.

There are videos of the voting booths showing ONLY the candidates from the political party that’s on the government. There is also no knowledge of who or belonging to which party has done this, everyone’s cleaning their hands.

So, what are we, as Dominican people, doing?

Thousands of young people in the capital are peacefully protesting (something we all have the right to do) in front of the Electoral Board (the organism responsible for just and transparent elections, in charge of counting votes, setting dates for the elections, etc) with signs and claiming for answers and for the board members to quit as soon as we have the new municipal elections.

(If they all quit before that we might be driven to either a Constitutional change, probably meaning 4+ years to our current president, that btw, has been president for two consecutive periods, meaning 8 years. Or for the Senate to elect a new Board, cutting short the time for the near presidential elections). (They called for new elections on about 4 weeks)

Yesterday (Feb 17th), the first day of the protest, they gave us a mass blackout. Even the subway was off, why? So the media (which does not mean much here, trust me) couldn’t cover the protest and the news wouldn’t spread. The whole country was out of electrical power for about 20 hours.

And today, second day of the pacific protest, those people were gassed. The police threw tear pumps to a bunch of young people that was just exercising their rights.

The funny thing is no one tear gassed them: The police says they weren’t and so does the military, the Electoral Board and the government. And that shit is scary as fuck. Those bombs were a clear threat.

Tomorrow, those people are planning to go back and to not stop until they fix their mess up. They won’t scare them away and they won’t shut them up.

But despite that, some of us are still scared. Scared of ending up just like Venezuela or Cuba. Scared because of what will come after this.