SANTO DOMINGO.– Senator José del Castillo Saviñón, described as contempt the refusal of the director of the National Police, Eduardo Alberto Then, not to attend the call of the Permanent Commission of the Interior and Police of the Chamber of Deputies, where he was going to be interrogated about abuses allegedly generated in recent months in that institution.
Del Castillo argued that the actions of an official such as the director of the Police, not responding to a call from the National Congress is a bad example for public powers and for the country because it only achieves a bad institutional image.
“It seems unnecessary to me that the director of the Police put himself in that situation,” said Del Castillo, when interviewed on the television program Tras las Huellas by journalist José Cuevas.
The legislator of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), for Barahona, explained that it is the duty of the National Congress to oversee public policies by the government.
He said that it is the obligation of any official to attend an appointment that the National Congress makes.
In this sense, the Senator added that for these reasons, legislation is needed that regulates and carries penalties equivalent to what would be contempt and that the National Congress can ask a judge for the help of the public force to force an official to keep an appointment, if necessary.
He said that the Minister of the Interior and Police, Jesús Vásquez Martínez, was not the one called to speak before the commission of the Chamber of Deputies, but the director of the Police who should have gone and given the required explanation.
He stated that the Legislative is still a weak institution, despite the fact that it is the first Dominican State Power as established by the constitution.
However, he stated that he aspires to the Legislative Branch achieving institutional strength so that unnecessary things such as the one committed by the current Police Director, Alberto Then, do not continue to happen in the Dominican Republic.
“The National Congress must be strengthened, for a better performance in its functions and duties, but that can be achieved with a law,” he added.
