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Para ver esta página en español, oprima aquí. PUERTO RICO HERALDHerald Readers Speak!Carlos Pesquera: Puerto Rico Political Personality of the Year
January 3, 2003 In the most recent Hot Button Issue Poll, Herald readers voted for New Progressive Party (NPP) President, Carlos Pesquera as 2002’s Puerto Rico Political Personality of the Year. In a final tabulation before this edition’s deadline, 36% of poll participants made him their choice while 29% selected current Puerto Rico Governor Sila Calderon for the honor. U.S. Congressman, Jose Serrano (D-NY), a Puerto Rican representing New York’s Sixteenth District in the Bronx, polled 15%, while San Juan U.S. Justice Department prosecuting attorney, Guillermo Gil, trailed with 8%. 12% of voters indicated that they wished to nominate a candidate other than the four offered on the ballot. Of those proposing other candidates, the only specific name suggested in emails to the Herald was former Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Rossello. Pesquera, the presumptive opponent to Ms. Calderon in the 2004 Gubernatorial elections in Puerto Rico, maintained his lead over the current Governor, both on the mainland and island. Surprisingly, among island voters, Pesquera thumped the current Fortaleza occupant by eight percentage points. 64% of poll participants identified themselves as living in one of the fifty states, while the remaining 36% voted as island residents. An analysis of the total vote and a breakdown, by percentage, of balloting within the three categories follows:
One cannot divine the specific reasons for individual reader choices but it is clear that Pesquera, phoenix-like, has arisen from his defeat by Ms. Calderon in the 2000 race for Governor and has successfully bobbed and weaved around the political corruption accusations, indictments and convictions of NPP functionaries from the Rossello NPP administration. Such nimble political footwork has surprised many who, last year at this time, doubted that he could survive his party’s ill repute and remain viable as the front-running opposition candidate for Governor. Of that possibility, Pesquera speaks with confidence, assuring doubters that he is not afraid of a party primary in which San Juan NPP Mayor Jorge Santini and/or former Governor Pedro Rossello would challenge him for the party’s nomination. Further, he expresses confidence that the Puerto Rican electorate will "get it right" this time and put him behind Ponce de Leon’s desk at La Fortaleza in January of 2005. Another likely factor for Pesquera’s ascendancy in the poll over Sila Calderon is her perceived ineptitude as the island’s chief executive. As readers were voting for the Herald’s top Puerto Rican political personality at the end of last year, she was replacing resigned cabinet members, pulling back failed initiatives from a legislature that her party dominates and rejecting Pesquera’s call for a political status plebiscite in the new year. Her year-end message to Puerto Ricans promised the implementation of new initiatives in 2003, but constituents are questioning why so little has been done by her administration after two years in office. The island economy is in decline and she is running government fiscal deficits. Her standard excuse -- that she inherited all these economic woes from the Rossello Administration -- has a hollow sound after twenty-four months in office. Finally, we can attribute Carlos Pesquera’s increasing popularity to political gumption, at times boarding on the reckless. His embrace of the U.S. flag has energized statehood advocates and the NPP establishment. Also, he has taken every opportunity to call the sitting Governor to task for failed initiatives and attempts to project her vision of Puerto Rico’s political future. He is now facing riot charges in the San Juan Superior Court stemming from his forcible entry into the Women’s Advocate Office to place an American flag alongside a Puerto Rican one in the office lobby. His trial, along with three other confederates in the "flag break-in caper," is scheduled for early this year and he seems to be relishing it as an opportunity to assail Governor Calderon’s separatist tendencies. He contends that it is a civil rights case, wherein his are being violated. The trial could give Ms. Calderon discomfort if it helps Pesquera achieve "martyr status." On the other hand, if he is convicted, it could complicate any future run for the Governorship, since local law prohibits those convicted of a felony from running for island political office. Carlos Pesquera has proven to be an adroit leader of the opposition in a year when the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) held all of the executive and legislative power on the island and his NPP party was reeling from past wrongdoing in office when it held power. The coming year will see new challenges for the NPP leader as he attempts to achieve his metamorphosis from a defeated candidate in 2000 into successful challenger for the Governorship of Puerto Rico in 2004.
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