NGO mudslinging at salmon executive secretary Sandoval
Opinion: The tendency of kicking someone when they’re down is a common and ugly occurrence in politics, and this week the local NGO’s that dedicate their time to painting bad views about aquaculture demonstrated a classic example of this gang behaviour against Felipe Sandoval. Sandoval’s job of leading the Ministry of the Economy’s Salmon Round Table is a painstaking process of unravelling numerous interrelated issues and addressing the problems inherent therein. The problems are many, and the people are many, who are anxious to see positive results of Sandoval’s work, which are inevitably slow in the making. The NGO’s mudslinging tactic of taking a dry, purely bureaucratic news piece on Sandoval and turning it into a sensationalistic story of corruption and fraud, will only distract him from advancing any faster in the salmon industry issues at stake. The fraud claimed is a fiscal irregularity regarding the granting of fishing subsidiaries for local fishermen while Sandoval served as Undersecretary of Fisheries in 2003. Sandoval granted over US$ 500,000 amongst 150 people who falsely claimed themselves as registered fishermen eligible for the subsidiary. And as Sandoval logically stated in the La Nacion, "If there is proof of false registrations, obviously the government must investigate, and that is why Financial Controller has called me to court. If I am victim of a fraud those that committed the fraud must be sought out, but let us not punish the person who was tricked."
