Many students of political sciences and connoisseurs of history, as well as ordinary citizens, sometimes fantasize about how would things be better, in the Dominican Republic, if they had a chance at the governmental rudder.
What are your ideas? How would you do things differently and govern for the close to 10 million Dominicans and 2 million Haitian "visitors"?
Would you be remembered as a despot? or a wise man?
Remember that you have FOUR YEARS, and not any more to bring to reality your grandiose plans.
Let's start one year at a time.

Well for me personally I would disband congress and the senate immediately and send the bums home, and then govern by decree.
Then I would institute a mandatory draft for persons 18 to 28, To either join the armed forces to do community work and learn a trade, or do a DR version of the peace corps.
Then I would bring some international tax collection experts, and ask everybody that held a public post in the past 10 years to show justification and provenance of their riches.
I will close the central bank and fire or pension all the employees, and adopt the dollar or euro as official currency. Banks would be instructed to only charge a maximum of 10% interest on credit cards.
I will remove all customs duties and impose a plain 20% tax on all imports and no ITBS. I will have many tax free areas at large tourist spots for them to make tax free purchases.
I will cancel all taxes on airplane tickets and only impose a $20 exit tax.
I will set gasoline taxes at a fixed number and not a percentage and make prices fluctuate at the discretion of private enterprise.
The DR should have no say so in the religion of the state, and worship should be voluntary and not mandatory in private and public schools.
Immigration should be controlled and regulated, and foreign nationals must show proof of residency and payment of taxes or face immediate repatriation.
Our national police should be made a civilian organization.
The three other branches of the armed forces, army, navy and air force should be merged into just one, called the national guard.
Will continue.

1. eradicate corruption

It is pity that even after few decades there is no effort to eradicate corruption in government. If few corrupt politicians are punished sternly, it is possible that all people below poverty can be uplifted with the accumulated money.


By the way, great topic Generoso.

Another issue to tackle, general, is the establishment of an efficient department to regulate the titles on property of the land, cuz' there are many investors and private persons that are robbed blind by the land mafias out there, specially in the east, where the cases about some people receiving the title to the same land haven't been one or two, but a dozen. Also, and I hate to say this, but the lands and properties that are not occupied should be militarized, in order to avoid the forced eviction of squatters, and prevent people from making hovels near the rivers or cañadas, the first places that are hit whenever a hurricane hits the country.

Thank you partner, let's hope that we get some great ideas, and who knows what the future may hold.
Regarding corruption, there is no way that corruption can be eradicated all at once overnight, but it can be greatly minimized and reduced. There is a study that states that 40% of the national budget is skimmed off the top by corrupt public servants. That is a huge amount and something to reckon with.
Transparency international has country guidelines to reduce corruption, but there has to be a will, starting at the top, to reduce corruption and right now there is none, since cronyism rules.
We could have goals to reduce corruption in stages, let's say 20% in one year, and then 10% more and then 5% and so on.
Let's have some ideas. other than jail and firing squads.

I hear you Mr. President (As you were elected in the patriot thread), and I hope you find good advisers to help you be successful. LOL.
Can I be the secretary of the armed forces? Thank you, I will not dissapoint you. LOL
Back to land titles, it is a mess. There are twice as many titles out there as there is land according to a well versed lawyer, who specializes in titles. But we have progressed immensely from a few years back to now, where they have GPS measured titles and even title companies (Stuart Title) guaranteeing your purchases. About militarization would be going to far, and maybe prone to abuses, and I will stay away from that, with all due respect.

Well, if militarization won't do, then how about charging a tax to absentee owners? most of the problems with squatters comes from the fact that the majority of these absentee owners leave their lands "a lo que Dios quiera", and when they want to go back to them, ZAS!, he/she finds him/herself dealing with the prospect of evicting 101 families out of his/her land. I'm sure that in making them pay for their land, the owners will take better care of its well being.

I highly agree with this but it would be seen as the move of a despot. This would also be a step backwards, but a needed step backwards.

Excellent idea, but would possibly lower it to 25.

While this is a good show for the public, this sounds lengthy, can be drawn out, and expensive in terms of time.

How would you go about reopening it? How long would it take if at all? What do you hope would be accomplish by switching currency and why consider the dollar at all for currency switch considering the current trend of dollar vs Euro?

Long time coming.

We should also encourage immigration from other areas of the globe and live up to our promises if any other than abandoning them a la Trujillo and the Japanese.

Should also lower corruption and raise their living standard as well as provide basic needs such as bullet proof vests. This would itself lower corruption and hopefully work it's way down to the minimum 5% (my dad was NYPD and always said that standard was fine and should work down there considering there will always be corruption and settle like NYC did for 5%)

What would this do, in your mind? I otherwise agree with it out of simplicity.

Keep them coming, I always have questions or extensions.

On this account, I would take special pains in welcoming israelis, taking care in assigning then lands on our southwestern corner, cuz' they're the absolute masters in transforming deserts into replicas of the Eden. Plus, israeli women are drop dead gorgeous, which would help a lot in diversifying our gene pool.

This could be a big help once you get things more settled. All joking aside.