Dominica in crisis as governance issues take the international stage

Amb Crispin Gregoire, Glen Polydore, Gabriel Christian, Thomson Fontaine, and Dr Finn take the message of poor governance to a global audience.

Washington, DC (TDN) —- On Saturday January 7, 2012 representatives of the Coalition in Defense of Dominica’s Democracy (CDD) and the Dominica Academy of Arts and Sciences (DAAS) took the message of poor governance in Dominica to an international audience.

Speaking on Pacifica Radio in Washington DC, former Ambassador Crispin Gregoire, Gabriel Christian, Dr Emanuel Finn and Dr. Thomson Fontaine presented to the international community a detailed analysis of what they have described as a systematic erosion of governance in Dominica.

According to Christian, Dominica is faced with a crisis of enormous proportions where the government of Dominica continues to sell diplomatic positions and passports to known criminals, crooks and persons of less than noble repute.

The panel, hosted by Vaughn Martin discussed among others the case of ambassador designate to Ireland Mr. Serge Roger De Thibault De Boesinghe, who turned out to be a neo Nazi leader and Francesco Corallo ambassador designate to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Italy.

Both the governments of Ireland and Italy blocked the appointments. In the case of Corallo he faces a 45 billion Euro tax evasion charge in his country.

Issues of international security were raised in light of the sale of passports to Iranian nationals under English sounding names and the granting of new identities to people for whom no thorough due diligence is being conducted.

Both the DAAS and CDD called on the Skerrit government to come clean with the Dominican people as it relates to the number of diplomatic appointments sold, the amount of money collected and the total number of passports sold.

They called on the international community to assist in bringing pressure to bear on the Dominica government to put an immediate end to the passport sales and to conduct a commission of enquiry into the attempted murder of a local lawyer and his wife. Listen to full recording of press event.