THE MISSING QUESTION AT THE PDP ASSEMBLY

Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá gave the political performance of his life. The theme was “March 24, 2008”, the day he was indicted by a federal grand jury. It’s a bit of a stretch to compare it to December 7, 1941, and he did not use the phrase “a date which will live in infamy,” but he came close.

To say that the April 27th Popular Party assembly was “orchestrated” is to put it mildly. He punctuated his speech with many of the familiar PDP campaign battle cries – “Sin Miedo! – Without Fear!” – at regular intervals his voice raising in indignation, shouting and beating the air with his fist, at that precise moment his words drowned by the loud music of familiar PDP campaign songs, throwing the thousands of PDP flag-waving militants in front of him into a frenzy.

The message is that Puerto Rico has been “attacked” – not exactly like the U.S. at Pearl Harbor or on 9/11, but yes, “attacked.” Bringing up past battles – the “bombing of Vieques” by the U.S. Navy, the police killing of two independentistas at Cerro Maravilla, the FBI killing of Machetero leader Filiberto Ojeda, letting him “bleed to death” – Acevedo cried at the top of his voice that after “March 24th”, Puerto Rico must decide whether it will drop to its knees and surrender, or whether it will fight back.

With a deafening roar, an enormous out pouring of patriotic emotion, the thousands of PDP militants demanded that Acevedo lead this battle to defend Puerto Rico – its dignity, its honor, its identity – indeed, its very survival as a people.

It was indeed a great performance. Acevedo achieved his goal. At the end, he had even the PDP mayors that a day before asked him to step down, now joining the frenzy to have him remain as candidate. And he made “March 24th” a symbol of the excessive use of U.S. power in Puerto Rico: another battle over political status. This should surprise no one. This is what island political leaders always do. Whatever is wrong in Puerto Rico, there is always one cause. When an independentista or, lately, a statehooder is convicted by a federal grand jury, there is always one cry: “colonialism!”

Acevedo was careful not to use the word. But no one at the assembly, or watching it on TV, had any doubt that this is precisely what he was talking about. Since Commonwealth status was created in 1952, he said, Puerto Rico has been losing its autonomy. So, he cried out, “March 24th” forces Puerto Rico to finally “resolve the status issue:” to fight as never before for greater self-government. The first thing he will do after he and the PDP win the November elections will be to legislate a “constitutional assembly”.

But there was something missing.

What happened on March 24th was that a federal grand jury made up of Puerto Ricans accused Acevedo and 12 others of 27 counts of violation of federal and local campaign finance laws. What was missing in Acevedo’s speech, and certainly at the PPD assembly, was any indication that anyone seemed to care whether the indictments are true or not. It did not matter. It was enough for him to say, as he did in the beginning, that everyone in Puerto Rico knows that they are “politically motivated.”

Of course, the indictment of a Governor of Puerto Rico months before the November elections has a big political impact. But political impact and “political motivation” are not the same. The fact that an indictment will necessarily hurt a political leader is not proof that that was the purpose. If the U.S. Justice Department, or the Puerto Rico Justice Department, were guided by the political impact of its actions, they will never investigate or indict a political leader.
#And clearly the justice departments have a special responsibility to investigate precisely political leaders that may have violated the law. In the case of the federal prosecutors in Puerto Rico, for years they relentlessly investigated and the federal courts convicted scores of pro-statehood, New Progressive Party leaders, Acevedo’s political opponents, many of them ending up in prison.

Since the consensus in Puerto Rico, backed by the opinion polls, was that there was no way Acevedo could win in November due to the economic crisis, the “political” decision would have been to dodge the political firestorm sitting on the indictments until after he lost the elections. The decision to seek indictment in March, and not wait, certainly seems to confirm what the prosecutors say – that today, as yesterday, they are driven not by politics but by the facts, the evidence.

Now Acevedo, in this masterfully orchestrated assembly, hopes to turn what appeared to be a sure defeat into another “miracle victory.” It won’t be easy. To do so, he will have to do something that historically has been difficult in the mass of the Puerto Rican people: that nationalistic, patriotic fervor trumps economic reality on election day.

One more point. Anyone that knew Luis Muñoz Marín knows that it is not a good idea to speculate on how Muñoz would have reacted to this or that. Muñoz was complex and the chances of error are big. But Acevedo mentioned him a lot, quoting from one of his books. And I have to think that if Muñoz had read the 55-page indictment, the question he would have asked, indeed demanded answered, is: is this true or not?

And I have to think that had he been at the assembly, he would have been struck that this was precisely the question that the party he created, the once great party that transformed Puerto Rico, was determined not to ask.