The Endless Election

Puerto Rico's tardy winner

In a tiny park on the outskirts of San Juan's business district, ten people gathered under an almond tree for a weird rite. They laid out a coffin with a paper-and-rag doll in side and surrounded it with four large candles, slips of paper with numerals and percentages, and branches from a local plant called Cruz de Malta.

In overwhelmingly Catholic Puerto Rico, such a bizarre ceremony, with its overtones of voodoo, seemed somewhat out of place. In fact, its significance was as much political as religious. In a for mer pantyhose factory nearby, dozens of party representatives were conducting a painstaking ballot-by-ballot recount of all 1.6 million votes cast in the island's gubernatorial election. The race between Governor Carlos Romero Barcelo and his main challenger, Rafael Hernandez Colon, had been so close that some of the Governor's more zealous supporters concluded that a ceremonial appeal for divine intervention -- with coffins containing opponents' effigies -- might swing the recount his way.

Last week, after a six-week delay, In cumbent Romero was at last declared the winner. He received 47.2% of the votes to Hernandez Colon's 47.1% -- a margin of 3,503 ballots.

The hairbreadth victory, following a strident and violence-marred campaign, was a hollow one for Romero. He had en joyed a 10-to 20-point lead in pre-election polls and was hoping for a land slide. The charismatic, white-haired Governor, an advocate of immediate state hood for Puerto Rico, had campaigned on a pledge that he would call a 1981 plebiscite on that question if the electorate returned him to office with a decisive majority. He now feels voters made it clear that they will not be hurried into state hood. "I thought I was being pushed by the people," he said after election day.

"Now I have to let the people tell me when it is time."

Romero and his New Progressive Party attribute the collapse of support to overconfidence among party faithful and to Romero's initial backing for the U.S. Government's plan to send Cuban and Haitian refugees to Fort Allen, a reopened military base in the southern part of the island. Even though no refugees have been transferred there, the plan angered many Puerto Ricans, and Romero hurriedly became a bitter critic of it.

The Popular Democratic Party's Hernandez Colon, who was Governor for four years before losing to Romero in 1976, campaigned aggressively against statehood, insisting that Puerto Ricans did not want to relinquish their 28-year-old commonwealth status. To guard against election fraud, he issued a "call to the trenches" for his followers. They became so stirred as initial results came in on election night that a large crowd marched on the Roberto Clemente Coliseum, where the ballots were counted. They threw rocks at police and at cars displaying the N.P.P.'s palm tree emblems and burned an effigy of Romero. Riot squads were needed to restore order.

To avoid a government stalemate during the next four years, the two parties will have to cool their passions and cooperate, since Romero faces a senate controlled by the opposition (15 to 12) and may have only a one-vote majority in the 51-member house of representatives. In a conciliatory move, Romero has offered to submit his cabinet for confirmation to the P.D.P.-controlled senate, though he is not required to do so. He has also appealed to leaders of all parties for restraint.

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