DominicanToday.com - A team of television reporters was chased and fired on Friday night by a group of armed men who guarded a truck of the National Lottery loaded with merchandise at its headquarters in Santo Domingo, and from there to a government-run market in La Romana (east).
The armed men fired on the reporters of the program El Informe with Alicia Ortega who were in a blue Ford Ranger pickup, in a 30 kilometer pursuit from La Romana, where the truck unloaded the merchandise, to the entrance of San Pedro de Macorís.
The reporters said the aggressors chased them on two vehicles: a double cabin Mitsubishi L200 pickup which waved a banner of the ruling PLD party, but couldn’t identify the other in the darkness.
For weeks Ortega’s team had been reporting on the transfer of electric appliances and other household goods taken on trucks and containers from the National Lottery building and in every case ended up in warehouses of the PLD’s candidates in the congressional and municipal elections.
The program with the incident will air today Monday in Ortega’s weekly spot on Antena Latina at 9 p.m.
Condemnation
The Dominican Alliance Against Corruption, ADOCCO, rebuked the aggression.
“The funds of the National Lottery are being used by its administrator Enrique Martinez to finance the candidates of the ruling party’s different posts,” said ADOCCO Coordinator Julio de la Rosa Tiburcio, who said his denunciation is based on the handout of electric appliances in all PLD political activities
Another veteran investigative reporter, Huchi Lora, Monday morning said “this is something really serious,” and noted that Martinez’s wife is the senatorial candidate for La Romana, where the handout of appliances took place in rallies staged for that purpose.
