Juan de los Santos, the mayor of Santo Domingo East, was savagely gunned down by an assailant along with one of his guards inside of a government office earlier today in an incident that promises to bring grief to the small Caribbean nation, which occupies the Western part of the island of Hispaniola along with Haiti, its less prosperous neighbor.
Mr. de los Santos was a close ally of Dominican President Danilo Medina; both members of the ruling political party. The assailant also died during the confrontation, allegedly from a self-inflicted gunshot.
Mr. de los Santos, who just yesterday had an interview with El Listin Diario in which he confessed that his biggest fear was public speaking, made his fortune from sports gambling, an illegal activity for which he was once jailed. "I spent a night in prison, and was let out after making bail," the mayor confessed.
Mr. de los Santos never repented for his connections to sports gambling, and the eventual legalization of the activity helped solidify his fortune and rise to power. He was seen by some as a potential successor to Mr. Medina, the current president.
In 2013, members of FALCONDO, the worker's union formed by members of the Canadian mining conglomerate Falconbridge, accused multiple Dominican politicians of attacking them in an incident which resulted in one member of FALCONDO being shot.
The Canadian mining conglomerate has gained the ire of a large segment of Dominican society after gaining concessions to mine gold while paying only 3% to the state in what was seen as one of the most corrupt contracts handed out by Mr. Medina's predecessor, Leonel Fernandez; also a member of the ruling party.
The Dominican Republic had a low crime rate and relatively few murders before the rise of the current political party, but now it seems to be hitting close to home. In a nation where the employees of an international conglomerate are openly shot at, a scandal only really surfaces when a politician who helped that conglomerate solidify its operations is murdered.
