SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The future of Puerto Rico’s political status and recovering but fragile economy are at the center of a fierce debate as the island’s two major parties hold a fierce gubernatorial primary on Sunday.
Governor Pedro PierluisiThe leader of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, he is seeking a second term against Puerto Rican Congresswoman Jennifer Gonzalez. The two ran as co-candidates four years ago. Gonzalez announced plans to challenge Pierluisi Since then, the two have been engaged in an intensifying public spat.
Running alongside Pierluisi for the congressional post is Puerto Rican Senator William Villafañe, while former Puerto Rican Secretary of State and U.S. Navy senior officer Elmer Roman is also seeking the post under Gonzalez.
Meanwhile, Puerto Rican Senator Juan Zaragoza, a former highly-acclaimed former Secretary of the Treasury of Puerto Rico, is running against Congressman Jesus Manuel Ortiz as the primary candidate of the Popular Democratic Party, which supports maintaining the status quo of Puerto Rico as a U.S. territory.
Lawyer Pablo José Hernández is running unopposed for his party’s municipal council candidate, the first time he has sought the nomination in 20 years.
Candidates will face a disgruntled electorate on an island still struggling with chronic power outages and high electricity bills as it recovers from Category 4 Hurricane Maria in September 2017.
More than a dozen polling stations, including the one where Ortiz cast his vote, reported power outages, forcing workers to revert to manual voting, and heavy rains drenched parts of the island, prompting flood warnings in nearly a dozen towns and cities.
Power outages remain a major concern, so the state elections board has rented more than a dozen generators and private power companies have identified 81 alternative polling stations with guaranteed power.
“The last time I voted was years ago,” said Benito Lopez, a 66-year-old retiree wearing a T-shirt that read “Magic Island.” He planned to vote for a candidate he didn’t want to give his name “to see if there’s any improvement or change.”
Other voter complaints include the difficulty of obtaining business licenses, a crumbling education system and the island’s inability to access capital markets after the local government emerged from the largest debt restructuring in U.S. history two years ago.
Meanwhile, Puerto Rico’s power company, the largest of the government’s entities, remains unresolved with more than $9 billion in debt. A federal judge overseeing the bankruptcy-like process has yet to rule on a restructuring plan following tough negotiations between the government and bondholders.
“They destroyed Puerto Rico,” Cecilio Rodriguez, 79, said of the current and previous administrations as he waited to vote. “Economic development must be a priority.”
For other voters, top priorities include stemming the exodus of doctors from Puerto Rico and fixing the U.S. territory’s crumbling health care system.
“The patients are the ones who have to stay and put up with this. It’s not fair,” said Dr. Alfredo Rivera Freites, an anesthesiologist who moved from Puerto Rico to St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands after continued problems with the local health care system.
He returned home two years ago with plans to retire, but the need for anesthesiologists in Puerto Rico brought him back to work.
Ahead of the primary, Pierluisi has touted record tourism numbers, ongoing hurricane recovery and growing economic development as his successes as he seeks reelection. He has promised to prioritize projects that target children and the island’s growing elderly population.
The event marking the end of the campaign a week before the primary was headlined by former Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, who resigned in August 2019 after nearly two weeks of mass protests sparked by the leaking of vulgar and insulting chat messages between him and his top advisers.
His opponent, Gonzalez, who didn’t run to the end of the election, has pledged to crack down on corruption, increase funding for agencies that help victims of violence amid a surge in murders of women and stem the exodus of doctors and other health care workers to the U.S. mainland.
Zaragoza, meanwhile, has pledged to make it a priority. Climate Change His opponent, Ortiz, has pledged to improve the licensing process to attract doctors, simplify the island’s tax system, and reform the health care system.
Puerto Rico’s next governor will have to work with a federal management board that oversees the island’s finances, created after the government declared bankruptcy.
More than 4,900 inmates in prisons across the territory voted ahead of Sunday’s primary election, and state election officials also received and counted more than 122,000 early ballots.
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