The Election

The Election

By Jonathan Morales Rosario

The General Elections of Puerto Rico, the “Island national game”, this event take place, every four years. We have now four different players and each one have played well, some of them have great defense and others have great strategies and offensive, some have a weak point others have great points.

The election in Puerto Rico are going to be really though, we are expecting a battlefield, but I got faith that no matter what Anibal Acevedo, Luis Fortuño, Edwin Irrizary and Rogelio Figuero say the people of Puerto Rico are the ones that have the last word on this matter, we as voters have the right to chose between what is right and what is easy, between what is good and what is wrong. We need to have a team of great mind on the top positions of our land otherwise we can expect four years of the same of the last decades. We could have, hypothetically talking, Acevedo and his team or Fortuño and his team even Rogelio and his team, but we are not going no place if there is no a real UNION within them, there north have to be the greater good for our land and not from them self as individuals and not as a group. Political leaders have to think that we are citizen and stop thinking that we are voters, and they have to think that the day after the elections. Stop thinking that this is a war of three groups: the one that follows the independence, the follow that statehood and the ones who like the way we are know; and start thinking that Puerto Rico need its people to stay, because all the student or the majority of students that graduate leave the country to try to find better opportunities. The problem of the “Political Status” will be a problem that it will be solve, but for know lets try to solve the economical problem, the health problem, and the security and drugs addiction. And for Christ sake stop taking the money of the people that gave you there trust.

Change

Change

By Jonathan Morales

Before the evaluation process that I will try to make on the capacity of Barack Hussein Obama to be the President of the United States of America, we need to know who Mr. Obama is. Barack Obama, is the elected president of the USA, he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii -the first elected president that has born outside of the Continental States-. His parents are Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr... Mrs. Dunham is from Kansas and Mr. Obama Sr. is actually from Kenya. This may sound a little racist, though I will try to make it sound as neutral as possible, his mother is a white American and his father is an African. That makes elected-president Barack Obama a person that is rich on culture, rich on the problems of society and rich on the problems of the world. He lives in the United States, a place filled with the culture of other countries, where African-Americans and white-Americans co-exists among themselves – or actually tries to. The election of this cultural icon is actually the only right decision that the American people have made since the year 2000 -the election of the Republican president George Bush. There is nothing bad about the Republican Party; there have been a lot of presidents that were republicans that did great things like Abraham Lincoln. But the Democratic Party has a tradition when it comes to great presidents like George Cleveland, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter, and we can only hope that Obama honors the greatness of all of the others Presidents of the United States.

Barack Obama comes with an agenda, and his agenda includes working with everyone to make a Change in America and in the whole world; he started this by appointing New York State Senator, Hillary Clinton to be the Secretary of State, prior to that they were running against each other to be the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. Now Mrs. Clinton is the Chief of International Diplomacy in Obama’s cabinet. This is a way of telling everyone in the US and the World that the government of Barack Obama is going to be a government of union. One of the first things that the former Senator of Illinois has done since he was elected president is to try to establish a common ground to try and do the best for the country. He was at the White House with President Bush in a meeting where they established trust to work together in the transition of the government. In the primary, he established communications with other countries in the world. He came to Puerto Rico and promised a process of self determination, and when the Puerto Ricans know what they want to do, he will make the opinion of the Island count in Congress. He established “friendship” with the Republican Presidential candidate John McCain.

I got a lot of faith in Barack Obama, even though we in the Island can’t vote for the President of the United States and there are 50 states and other territories on the Union that have more priority over us. I know that there is an on-going war on terrorism in the world. I know that there are problems with the health system. I know that there is a problem in the petroleum industry. I know that there is Global Warming. I know that there are a lot of problems that come before the status of the Puerto Rico. I also know that the whole world is in a process of recession. But I believe that he is like us, a young African-American with 47 years of age that knows that there is a need of Change in the world and he will try to make it happen.

The Common Fight

The Common Fight
By Jonathan Morales Rosario

The common fight, there are things that the Puerto Rican “ Jibaro” has been fighting since the Island was a colony of the Spanish Empire and the Spanish conquistador, that is the identity. The Puerto Rican has a need and a right to feel his or her identity, because we are proud of the mix of races that we have: the Spaniards, the Indians and the Africans, this mix makes the Puerto Ricans an even prouder race. Who we are and where are we going? That is a question that the Puerto Ricans have in mind always. We know the answer of one of them, we are Puerto Ricans but we don’t know where we are going. I put the title of common fight because we have an internal fight amongst our people. Every four years we fight for what we think is right, for what makes us proud and for our identities. Politics, an event that changes the history of the “Jibaro”; puts families in position to fight, makes people lose their jobs, helps other people get jobs and makes people go mad. In the quest for our identity we have created political parties, these political parties have become what we were trying to find and this is bad, because now we are like three tribes, each one trying to control the other two. Between the disagreements that the main political parties have in the island, we can say that they have a common fight which is not ideological, but we can say that they are both looking for the progress of Puerto Ricans. We have had bad leaders in both parties and there has been good leaders in La Fortaleza from both parties trying to seek out a common identity between the people, uniting the people and trying to work as one, even though we know that there are more than one. We know that the focus of the political fight that we see in the streets, the senate and almost everywhere in the Island are based on the political status - Where are we going? -, we need to step aside of this matter and star to look at the important things that need the attention or more attention. Things that need attention such as the economical problem that the Island is facing, the educational problem and the social problem; these are things that are going from bad to worse in the Island. We are now facing a national recession that puts Puerto Rico in a really bad position; the educational situation is worse every day, the students aren’t learning anything, and socially we are so bad, last week a man killed his’ wife and cut her entire body up and put the pieces in baskets, what kind of psychopath can do something like this. I believe that we need to refocus on what is important to us as people, as “Jibaros”, as Puerto Ricans and forget, for the moment, about political issues and start working as a team no matter what is your color or your political party.