The other elections

The special significance of elections taking place in Puerto Rico on November 5 was evident beforehand. A commentator detected from opinion polls that, “This election already is historic. It already marks a before and an after.” For the first time ever, a gubernatorial candidate of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) was successfully challenging the candidates of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP) and the pro-commonwealth Popular Democratic Party (PPD). The two parties have ruled the roost in Puerto Rico for decades.

As of November 6, with 91 precincts having reported, PNP candidate Jenniffer González was leading with 39% of the votes. Juan Dalmau, the PIP candidate for governor, had gained 33% and PPD candidate Jesús Manuel Ortiz only 21%. Conservative candidate Javier Jiménez of Project Dignity obtained 7% of the vote.

Preliminary results of voting for the resident commissioner show the PPD candidate with 44.4% of the vote followed by 35.7% for the PNP candidate and 9.5% for Ana Irma Rivera Lassén of the MVC. The resident commissioner is Puerto Rico’s sole member of the US Congress. He or she has no authority to vote on legislation. The results of past voting for governor show a trend. Candidates of the PNP and PPD parties together shared 95% of the vote in 2012, 81% in 2016, and 65% in 2020. “These political parties have basically collapsed over the past ten years,” says Rafael Bernabe, gubernatorial candidate the Working People’s Party in 2012 and 2016. The PIP has broadened its appeal. Its candidates for governor moved from 2.5% of the vote in 2012 to 2.1% in 2016, and up to 13.5% in 2020. That party is heir to a legacy of serious US repression from police and the FBI directed at both the PIP and former Nationalist Party.

The improved electoral showing this of the PIP is due mainly to a creative work-around of the US government’s prohibition of coalitions being utilized in Puerto Rican elections. By late 2023, the PIP and the Citizens’ Victory Movement (MVC) had joined in an alliance called the Country’s Alliance (Alianza de País). The two parties created an arrangement whereby each partner would put forth its own candidate for all offices being contested, including governor and resident commissioner. The stipulation was that only one of the two candidates for each office is actually seeking votes. The other does not do so and has no intention of serving in office.

For example, PIP candidate [WW1] for governor Juan Dalmau received votes from MCV backers and they did not vote for the MCV candidate. Likewise, Ana Irma Rivera Lassén, the MCV candidate for resident commissioner (and general coordinator of the MVC) would gain PIP votes for her candidacy and none from her own party.

The MVC, formed in 2019 and joined by the Working People’s Party and the Hostosian National Independence Movement, claims in its Party program an “Urgent Agenda … [dealing with] the rescue of public institutions; social, environmental and economic reconstruction, and decolonization of Puerto Rico.”

Excerpted: ‘Puerto Rico Elections Show

Upswing of Popular and Independence Movements’.

Courtesy: Counterpunch.org