The president of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), Miguel Vargas Maldonado, led the start of the meeting of the Socialist International Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean in the country.
The meeting was held yesterday in La Romana and will conclude this Saturday in the same town, as announced by the head of the Socialist International for Latin America and former Foreign Minister of the Republic.
In delivering his central speech at the event, Vargas Maldonado referred to the harsh consequences that the coronavirus crisis has brought to the continent. “In our region alone, the pandemic has pushed 22 million people into poverty, of which 8 million are in a situation of extreme poverty,” warned the former official.
He explained that “a disease with low fatality rates was enough for poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean to reach 33.7% and extreme poverty to 12.5%, according to ECLAC figures.”
Likewise, he stated that thanks to the approved emergency vaccines against COVID-19 in an extraordinary time, “we can focus our efforts on overcoming the economic and social consequences of the pandemic, expressed in the inflationary crisis, the loss of jobs and the increase of poverty”.
“The post-pandemic scenario presents us with the great challenge of avoiding at all costs that the crisis causes the multiplication of social outbreaks throughout the region, for this it is necessary for governments to work together in the search for creative solutions, taking distance from measures populist and authoritarian practices that in the end only contribute to aggravating the problems that afflict us.”
Warns of the dangers of populism, criminality and inequality
Miguel Vargas Maldonado took advantage of the stage to draw attention to the phenomenon of populism and authoritarianism that affects the world, especially Latin America and the Caribbean.
“Increasingly we turn to the painful spectacle of leaders and rulers capable of anything in order to appear sympathetic to the citizens who, in their desperation in the face of the onslaught of the crisis, clap their hands at the incendiary harangue of the social avenger on duty”, warned.
Also, the political leader warned that “the growth of poverty and inequality, added to the weakening of democracy, create the conditions for insecurity and crime to grow considerably.”
It is the call of Vargas in the face of international crisis
Miguel Vargas Maldonado called for full unity in this period of crisis and said that beyond the ideological nuances of social democracy in the world, there is a duty to work together in the search for practical solutions to the problems of our species, “today accentuated by the pandemic, but which I am sure we can overcome if we rigorously apply the original principle of democratic socialism: solidarity”.
