The people of San Juan are happy with the investments, more than RD$2.0 billion, but they also criticize the fact that they are being carried out in the middle of a campaign that the director of the Supervising Office of State Projects, Felix Bautista, has to become the senator for the Dominican Liberation Party in the province.

The Fiscal deficit that affects the central government, said to be RD$9.915 billion at mid-year, does not have repercussion in the province of San Juan, at least to judge by the number of public works that are being carried out at this time.

The majority of the projects are being built under the command of the Office of Supervising Engineers for State Projects (OISOE) headed by Felix Bautista, on of the sons of San Juan with great positioning in the administration of Leonel Fernandez.

Bautista, who is also aspiring to be a senator for the government party in this province, has dedicated himself for the last four months to the physical transformation of the provincial capital, where construction of sidewalks, gutters, traffic islands, water conduits, the paving of streets, the refurbishing of the city gateway, and repairs to the entrance to the city are all going on. Besides this, there is an amphitheater, a sewer system, faster work on the Regional Branch of the UASD and interventions in towns and municipal districts.

In San Juan de la Maguana, the brigades from the OISOE are everywhere. They take part in everything from the exclusive urbanizations of Villa Felicia to the popular barrios like Guachupita and Los Mojaos. There are three principle avenues: Anacaona, the Northern Beltway and the Southern Beltway. All told, the governor Juan Rodriguez Ramirez estimates that the government's investment in the province is around RD$2.5 billion.

Each one of the projects is identified with a billboard that says what is being built, but at the same time it is in the colors of the PLD and mentions the political aspirations of Bautista in the Senate.

In fact, the publicity is already having an effect, because a lot of people speak of the official as the sure winner of the seat.

Projects were called for by the people

The enthusiasm that is shown by the OISOE to finish the project before the end of the year or by the beginning of 2010 does not surprise Manuel Matos, the president of the Council to Save San Juan, who explains that everything that is being done was called for by the people during two strikes that were held in March and April of this year, and were personally requested from President Leonel Fernandez during an audience last 8 May when the President received the group in the Presidential Palace.

"This is the result of the community's struggle" says Matos, even though he also recognizes that there is an interest on the part of Bautista to have some of the merit for the projects in the face of the May 2010 elections.

"The politicians take advantage of everything to proselytize, the people have to remember that this is the result of our struggle", Matos reiterates when he is asked about the use of publicity surrounding the projects, some of which are already in use such as the Juan de Herrera Hospital.

Matos' vision is shared by other people from San Juan that see the political background of the "construction revolution" that is going on is the so-called "grain belt of the South". "He (Bautista) is all over the town, because he wants to win and he wants the people to support him", is the opinion of Julia Ramirez Abreu, a resident on the Southern Beltway, where the OISOE is building a sewer line and plans to reconstruct the streets and sidewalks.

So many projects make Josefina Soto happy, and she celebrates the attention that the government is giving her city "because it will be more beautiful", but others are worried that the resources will disappear and later on the projects will not be finished.

Not for Bautista

Juan Rodriguez Ramirez, the governor of San Juan, rejects the idea that the ambitious plan of construction projects is motivated by the political aspirations of Bautista. In his defense of this point of view, he enumerates a series of public works that the government has built since 2004 in the province, among them schools, hospitals, the Azua-San Juan Highway, technological centers, the streets of Bohechio, aqueducts and others.

"The government has been here in general terms" the governor assured reporters, and the emphasized the fact that actually the streets of all the barrios of the provincial capital are being repaved, "because the roads were nearly in a state of emergency".

Nevertheless, he recognized that in the last few months there is a greater activity in the constructions that are being supervised by the OISOE in the province, something that is not seen in other important projects charged to the same office, such as the buildings in the main campus of the UASD, the community college in San Luis and the market in Villa Consuelo. The work on this last project has been halted for the last five months.

De Diario Libre