The Timothy Project

As some of you may have heard, Hugo Chavez won another 6 years in office. There seems to be a swing to the left. Over the weekend I saw several articles regarding the celebration of Castro’s birthday and many LA leaders who participated and seem to have strong ties to Cuba.  I saw the following info in an Associated Press release today and thought you might be interested. It really describes the economic struggle- the DR fits the pattern described below.

One in four Latin Americans live on less than $2 a day. That helps explain the new heft of the region’s political left - not just in Argentina, Chile or Brazil, where social democrats hold the presidency, but also in Peru, Mexico and Colombia, where the left lost presidential races but proved itself a formidable force.

Latin America has the world’s most unequal distribution of wealth outside of sub-Saharan Africa. Its richest 10 percent earns 48 percent of total income, while the poorest earns just 1.6 percent, according to the World Bank.

In the 1980s and 90s, most Latin American leaders heartily embraced a U.S.-advocated push for privatization of state industries and a lifting of trade barriers.

But per capita gross domestic product in Latin America and the Caribbean declined by 0.7 percent during the 1980s and grew by just 1.5 percent annually in the 1990s, the World Bank says. There was no significant decrease in poverty levels.

Now the legions of the poor have registered their displeasure, electing the likes of Chavez and Morales.

Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto calls the two “anti-market,”"anti-capitalist” charismatic leaders who are filling a power vacuum and benefiting from the huge unpopularity of President Bush’s administration with their anti-American rhetoric.

“The mistake, from my point of view, is trying to figure out Chavez. What you’ve got to figure out is why the market economic model has not worked to include the majority from Mexico down to Tierra del Fuego,” he said.

Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz praised Chavez and Morales for renegotiating oil and gas contracts with multinationals so the wealth could be more equitably shared, something Correa now promises to do in his oil-rich nation, where three in four people are poor.

“Whether they’re going to be able to get sustained growth can only be determined by the future,” Stiglitz said. “But the previous regimes were such failures that it’s hard for them to do much worse.”

The great challenge for any leader is spurring job growth. Venezuela’s official unemployment rate is nearly 9 percent - just two percentage points lower than in 1998, when Chavez was first elected, despite a booming economy.

The other night as I was walking the dog, I met up with the army- full fatigues and rifle. It was a strange experience although somewhat comforting given the way crime has been rising. We have had several young people killed for cell phones, sometimes in the middle of the day!  Read about how the government is fighting back…

Dominican Republic Deploys Crimefighters
Jul 29, 1:31 AM (ET)

By JONATHAN M. KATZ

(AP) A Dominican soldier watches while a national police officer registers a citizen during the… Full Image

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) - The joint military and police patrols deployed on the streets of the Dominican Republic to fight crime are having the desired effect and will remain there indefinitely, the nation’s police chief said Friday.

Thousands of soldiers - who are normally not involved in anti-crime work - and police officers set up checkpoints and enforce new alcohol regulations for a third night Friday in Santo Domingo and 16 other cities across the Caribbean nation, said National Police Chief Gen. Bernardo Santana Paez.

Roughly 6,000 soldiers and police were deployed Wednesday in response to a public outcry over rising crime, said Cpl. Carlos Tejada Rodriguez, an army spokesman.

President Leonel Fernandez announced the joint patrols Monday and also outlined plans to temporarily halt the importation of firearms and to ban alcohol sales after midnight Sunday through Thursday and after 2 a.m. on weekends.

“There is much satisfaction with the measures … they are having the desired effect,” Santana Paez told The Associated Press.

Police have not calculated how many arrests have been made nationwide during the patrols, Santana Paez said. More than 1,000 vehicles have been searched for illegal firearms and proper registration at checkpoints in the capital, he said.

The police chief previously dismissed accounts of a crime wave, citing numbers showing a decline in homicides. But police reports show that the number of violent crimes has increased by an average of two per day to five per day over the last year.

Psalm 65: 

5 You answer us with awesome deeds of righteousness,
       O God our Savior,
       the hope of all the ends of the earth
       and of the farthest seas,

 6 who formed the mountains by your power,
       having armed yourself with strength,

 7 who stilled the roaring of the seas,
       the roaring of their waves,
       and the turmoil of the nations.

 8 Those living far away fear your wonders;
       where morning dawns and evening fades
       you call forth songs of joy.

I have long believed that God has built better amusement parks than any man, His creation holds such wonder and enjoyment.  Yesterday the streets of Santiago looked like a water park, with the raging rivers that flooded the streets.  It amazes me how people can not fear the Lord when they consider that He is the creator of all of nature.

It was a beautiful day, didn’t look like rain to me but then around 3:30pm it began to get as dark as if it was 7:30pm.  And then came the rain, and did it ever rain. When I finally got home, my front gate area was flooded- I waded through water up to my knees to open it. And all through my driveway there was a river of 5.6 inches of water. Poor Oreo- she was beside herself with fear and as wet as could be! 

My Christmas tree is drying out in my driveway as I write- my storage shed (also Oreo’s dog house) was completely flooded! (I am going to have to make other plans for the dog, obviously!) 

I went over to the Hole last night to check on their situation and talked to Sol and Hector by phone to see how they all fared the storm. Thankfully there was no injury to anyone. Two houses were completely lost in the Hole but no one was in them, thankfully. 

The most important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one’s work seriously and taking one’s self seriously. The first is imperative, and the second disastrous.
- Margot Fonteyn

Here is an account from the AP of the results of the recent elections in the DR…

May 25, 12:09 AM (ET)

By JONATHAN M. KATZ

(AP) Dominican President Leonel Fernandez is greeted by supporters after casting his vote during the… Full Image

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) - Dominican President Leonel Fernandez’s party has won the Caribbean country’s recent legislative elections, according to results released Wednesday, which should enable him to carry out economic reforms.

The Dominican Liberation Party won 52 percent of nearly 3 million votes nationwide, which will likely give it a majority of seats in Congress, electoral commission spokesman Felix Ryan said.

Gaining control of Congress will help Fernandez push through economic reforms and complete the building of a metro system in the capital - initiatives that had been blocked by the opposition.

The election was May 16, but counting took more than eight days because of a high number of defective ballots, the electoral commission said.

Twenty-two parties fielded candidates in legislative elections in the first nationwide vote since Fernandez took office in 2004. Fernandez replaced Hipolito Mejia, whose administration was dogged by corruption scandals and economic woes.

Mejia’s Dominican Revolutionary Party won 22 percent of the vote, a drastic decline from the current Congress in which it controlled all but three Senate seats and half the House.

A total of 210 legislative seats were up for grabs.

The key issue during campaigning was the economy, which was hit hard under Mejia and is blamed by many experts for his re-election loss to Fernandez. Inflation has since fallen and the country’s gross domestic product grew 7 percent in 2005, according to the Central Bank.

This is a tragedy and speaks of the increasing tensions in the country concerning the presence of Haitians. My heart goes out to all my Haitian friends here in the DR. Please pray with us that this sort of evil will cease and people will act justly with one another.

Jan 11, 8:56 PM (ET)

By JOSE MONEGRO

(AP) The bodies of 24 Haitian migrants, who apparently died of asphyxiation, are seen in the morgue of… Full Image

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) - The bodies of 24 Haitian migrants who apparently suffocated crossing the border in a sealed truck have been found in the Dominican Republic, police said Wednesday.

The victims were among 69 Haitians, mostly adult men, who were driven across the border illegally at the northern Dominican town of Dajabon, said police spokesman Gen. Simon Diaz.

“Preliminary investigations indicate that the Haitians suffocated in the vehicle and that the people who transported them later disposed of the bodies,” said Diaz.

Eleven of the bodies were found on Tuesday in La Mina de Cacheo, and 13 more bodies were found on Wednesday in Los Guayacanes, police said. Both villages are about 230 miles northeast of the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo.

Police detained two Dominicans who allegedly drove the truck, Diaz said.

Plans have been drawn up to increase the 1,000-member Dominican force patrolling the porous 243-mile border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

About 1 million Haitians, many of them illegal immigrants, live in the Dominican Republic, home to 8.8 million people.

The Dominican Republic has relied on Haitian labor for decades to cut sugar cane, harvest coffee beans and to work in construction.

Historic tensions have increased recently between the two nations, which share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.

In December, Dominican villagers burned about 20 shacks occupied by Haitian migrants in reprisal for their alleged involvement in the killing of a businessman. In May, the Dominican government deported at least 2,000 Haitians after the killing of a Dominican woman.

 

 

12. Women swindled, offered to travel
Dozens of women from Santiago, Valverde, Esperanza, Puerto Plata, La Vega, Moca, and San Francisco de Macoris are complaining that they were cheated by a mafia that charged between RD$150,000 and RD$170,000 each, promising to take them to The Netherlands, according to a report in El Caribe. However, they were abandoned in Suriname. They said that they had paid a woman in Santiago who had contacts in several air terminals, but instead of going to The Netherlands, Switzerland, and other destinations, they ended up in Suriname where they were received by a Chinese national known as “Kinito”. They claim they were forced to practice prostitution there. El Caribe tried to track down the woman in Santiago to no avail. Judicial authorities in Santiago are investigating the case.

13. NYT: A-Rod to play for USA
New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez is staging a soap opera regarding his possible participation in the World Baseball Classic, and the latest episode is a rumor that now he will play for the US, according to EFE News Agency, quoting the New York Times. However, a source close to A-Rod, who is on vacation, said yesterday afternoon that the player has not made any decision about his participation in the championship. Last month, Rodriguez had said he was not going to play in the tournament because he did not want to insult the US, where he was born, nor the DR, his parents’ country. He has the option and right to play for either country. The Times does not explain the reasons why A-Rod would change his mind if this becomes official.
Rodriguez’s indecision is that he could end up pitching against the Dominican Republic team. The DR and the USA teams are the favorites to win the first truly world series of baseball. From March 3-20, 16 international teams and more than 400 stars will compete in the World Baseball Classic. See http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/wbc/index.jsp

We met in the dark last night in the Hole, and as you see below, many parts of the city are without electricity. I can’t help but think that the city in darkness due to the lack of power is illustrative of the spiritual darkness that envelops it!

3. Blackouts redux
A new wave of blackouts is hitting residents of the Dominican Republic’s larger cities. Many parts of Santiago experienced 18-hour power cuts and Santo Domingo suffered two major blackouts over the weekend. This comes after a period of relatively stable energy supplies, at least for the areas where the bill payment rate is high. According to Hoy newspaper, the power outages were caused by problems in the CDEEE’s transmission lines. Last Wednesday, a failure in the 169,000-volt transmission link to the Haina generation facility shut down five substations and left the areas around the Maximo Gomez and Luperon Avenues in the dark. Late on Friday most of Santo Domingo was blacked out lasting into the early hours of Saturday morning, as EdeSur reported failures in the 138,000-volt and 69,000-volt lines from Haina. These failures resulted in seven sub-stations going dark. Santiago’s La Informacion newspaper reports that the entire city is experiencing blackouts lasting between 16 and 18 hours, but the local distributor EdeNorte has not given reporters any explanation. The recent 5.8% price hike is provoking even more disgust among the clients.

On a scale of 0-10 with 0 being the highest level of corruption, the DR rates 3 according to an international group (Transparency International), putting it in the same class as Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Pahkistan, Somalia, and Sudan. Unfortunately, corruption breeds proverty and is also a barrier to overcoming it so it is a downward spiral in every sense! 

No surprise then that the Cibao region is experiencing a “huelga” (strike).  The opposing political party (those who lost the presidency) have paid the “tigeres” or thugs to burn tires, throw smoke bombs and basically reak havoc today. Los Ciruelitos is impassable along with a number of other barrios.  The streets are empty, people are tucked as safely away as they can be.

I was impressed this morning during my prayer time to pray that the stronghold that Satan has in corrupting those in power be broken and there be a genuine turn toward justice and righteousness. Please join me in praying that this be so, and for safety for the remainder of today and tomorrow.

What does this mean? Today is the National Day for Nutrition and attention is being called to the fact that in the DR 25% of the population are malnourished.  Obviously that is not a good situation, and the case is even worse in Haiti where 40% of the population doesn’t receive proper nutrition.

To top it off, the currency exchange for the dollar has changed slighty which has caused prices to rise as well.  I have been told that we will have a national strike Wednesday to Friday. Sometimes these things can get violent and shut down the country. Last time they called for one, the call basically went unheeded. Please pray for stability and for a long term solution to the hunger issues facing this country!