The Attorney General of the Republic, Miriam Germán Brito issued a message on the Day of the Judiciary in which she reaffirms the legal thinking of the patrician Joan Pau Duarte to emphasize the administration of justice to punish administrative corruption .
Germán Brito urges judges and prosecutors to follow Duarte’s example in punishing officials who strip taxpayers of their property.
“Duarte’s neat handling plants from the dawn of our republican life the rejection of the practice of administrative corruption. Now, it is up to us, judges and prosecutors, to follow his example and respond to this aspiration of the Dominican people of to see prosecuted and punished all those responsible for causing, in many cases, a brutal deprivation of taxpayers’ property when it is their turn to perform functions in the public administration “says the magistrate
Below is a full reproduction of Miriam Germán’s message :.
On this date, the Day of the Judiciary is celebrated. A power that needs to see itself as an instrument to achieve a life of respect and guarantee of rights for all citizens.
When we talk about justice, the judiciary, we cannot ignore the figure of Joan Pau Duarte.
Like any historical figure, Duarte does not escape controversy, nor the pretense of judging, with current parameters, the actions taken in the time that touched him.
The school is praised for the fact that Duarte pledged his property for the liberating cause, seeing it as an expression of something almost mystical, when the most accurate view is that in this fact, it reveals how far this man he believed in the noble cause of our independence.
Don Pedro Mir, referring to Duarte rightly points out, the role that in his formation had the ideas to the influence was exposed in the United States and, mainly, in the agitated Europe of 1830, making contact with enemy with the Rousseau’s thought, with potential constitutionalism; he was dazzled by the laws of Catalonia and the political effervescence of the Barcelona of the time, where anarchism flourished with his long-misunderstood concern for human freedom.
Also it had room in his thought what of innovator had the Constitution of Cadiz of 1812.
He has the merit of advocating for the constitutional supremacy contained in Article 6 of his draft. Duarte did not conceive of the Constitution as the so-called “piece of paper” of La Salle and repeated by a former president of our country; he thought of it as something endowed with life and strength to be internalized by the people as a norm of conduct.
In his project Duarte treated the value Justice, but not exhausting it in the conception of a public service. He goes further, looking at it as something to integrate into daily behavior, coming to put it as a condition for happiness … “Be fair (…) if you want to be happy.”
He has the vision of advocating for municipal power, intuiting that the municipality as an entity closer to the daily lives of citizens is a space for the exercise of democracy.
Now we have International Courts, we talked about genocide, crimes against humanity, but Duarte, who being our Founding Father chronologically was closer to adolescence than old age, sat on his project the notion of what imprescriptible of the crimes of lesa homeland.
Article 11 of the draft Constitution Duartiano is embodied the concern of that luminous man so we now call cause Trial, when he says: “No one may be tried unless in accordance with the law in force prior to the crime nor shall any penalty other than that laid down by law and in the manner prescribed by it be applied in any case “; thus leaving him to the passage to criminal proceedings that could eventually be instrumented without substance against those who question power.
In relation to the legal thought of Joan Pau Duarte we can conclude that, in addition to the constitutional supremacy, its two mooring beams are: a) the necessary legitimacy for the exercise of power, and b) to draw precise limits for the exercise of this.
He points out that in his time it must have been a stone of scandal for the subversive, and it is the non-existence for the citizen of the duty to obey an illegitimate authority, the duty of obedience has the precondition of the legitimacy, notion that resurfaces in the Constitution of 1963.
With a Duarte who was the man who had the luminous stubbornness to insist on believing in a project of a free, independent, sovereign nation; when almost all the signs told him no, he listened, perhaps dreaming that this people said to him “it’s time, dare” and he dared, he was far in his belief coming to sketch for this his project of Nation, the outline of a legal body that guarantees a society marching after an ideal of justice, freedom and happiness, that will never accept the cession of a meter of its territory nor a little of its sovereignty, nor he would pact with any form of corruption, as his accountability testifies.
Duarte’s neat handling plants from the dawn of our Republican life the rejection of the practice of administrative corruption. Now, it is up to us, judges and prosecutors, to follow their example and respond to this aspiration of the Dominican people to see all those responsible prosecuted and punished for causing, in many cases, a brutal deprivation of taxpayers’ property when it has touched them. to exercise functions in the public administration.
Where Duarte demonstrated his height that transcends the times was in his eagerness to emphasize that the sovereignty resides in the town, denying all possibility of yielding not one of her, either by means of the alienation of territories or the putting of powers in the hands of those who have not received it by the will of the sovereign who continues and will remain the people, even in bitter times is seen biting the dust of temporary defeats.
The Duartiano project conceived the legal system as an instrument to ensure the growth of a society in freedom, in harmony and remains a valid instrument, perhaps even more so now, in the empire of the fierce logic of profits, a time in what a comedian with obvious sarcasm puts one of his characters to express “to reassure the markets, we have unsettled people.”
Believing like Duarte in our possibility as a truly sovereign nation, committed without sectarianism to the unity of those who share progressive values, calls them to recognize themselves in him, to assume the dream of homeland, to want it in the stubborn clarity of his thought when it came to saying and doing homeland.