Where is the political center in Puerto Rico?

?By: Eduardo Bhatia?

Published in?El Nuevo Día

Sep 26, 2024?

I have received hundreds of calls and messages in recent days from good Puerto Ricans who do not know how to vote in these elections. I have always promoted and fought within a broad center that is more pragmatic than ideological, less passionate and more rational, and certainly more moderate. A center that knows that for the good of Puerto Rico it is necessary to listen to everyone, filter out good ideas and develop programs that build and do not destroy. It hurts me to see the absence of that center.?

I learned the benefits of the center since I was born. I am the son of Carmi?a Gautier Mayoral, who was a socialist and a Puerto Rico independence advocate. Don Juan Mari Brás of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP), Monsignor Antulio Parrilla, Noel Colón Martínez, Abigail Díaz de Concepción and many other extraordinary Puerto Ricans participated in the meetings at my house. In fact, my mom went to Nicaragua in 1985 to help rebuild the university in the face of the Sandinista triumph.

My dad, on the other hand, is an economist who believes in the forces of a well-regulated free market by the government. He is a scholar of John Maynard Keynes, but not an absolutist or extreme. He has always said that economics dictates much of political behavior. At home I became convinced that there was a need for a reasonable and inclusive center, not an ideological one, that rejected extremes, but did not insult them.

I confess that it hurts me to have dedicated my whole life to a brand - the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) – which I joined voluntarily because I believed it was the only institution that represented the correct balance in the governance of Puerto Rico. Good, rational, educated, thinking people, with sensitivity, without passions, with love for the common good, with commitment to the country, with advanced ideas, with moral and ethical fiber, found their home in the PDP.

There were no sacred cows: when it was necessary to nationalize, it nationalized; when it was necessary to privatize, it privatized. Far from ideological chains and ideas written in stone, it was a party of enormous pragmatism, healthy and necessary for our island in all its historical, political, economic and social context.

Democracy cannot thrive without that balance. A healthy center anchors public policies, allowing them to evolve sensibly in response to society's changing needs. The absence of this center creates a vacuum in which extreme positions dominate the conversation, and negotiation becomes impossible. The left and the right now see each other as enemies instead of fellow citizens with different points of view.

Puerto Rico needs that center. Unfortunately, those who have run the PDP for the last 10 years have tolerated that space being taken away from it. How is it possible that that brand, that north, is being lost, and that place is being filled today by extreme parties like the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) and the New Progressive Party (PNP)? The idea of a reasonable center seems not only radical, but almost extinct. The center is dying, and the forces of polarization are to blame. They played chess to a PDP who moved its chips wrong and now they have it in check.

But the issue is not the PDP: what we are losing is the necessary sense to govern. It is as senseless to say that Juan Dalmau's Maduro is a hero as to say that Jennifer González's Trump is. Neither one nor the other. The Puerto Rico I know would reject them both. That's why it was necessary for a strong and vigorous center to resurface in 2024, which inspired, encouraged, shouted, fought, vibrated, rippled, and shone.

A center that is dying means that our politics is no longer looking for healthy negotiations, but victories. The cost of this is clear: fewer voices advocating for practical, long-term solutions, and more ideological battles that ignore the needs of the majority of Puerto Ricans. If we want to protect the will of our people and improve our governance, creating a new center is not only desirable, it is essential.

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