Speakers at NPP General Assembly urge an undiluted vote for party’s candidates
By The Star Staff
New Progressive Party (NPP) gubernatorial candidate Jenniffer González Colón promised on Sunday to eradicate communism on the island, the Financial Oversight and Management Board, and the private contract of electrical grid operator LUMA Energy as well as remove the Education Department from federal receivership, if elected.
Speaking at the NPP’s Government Platform Assembly at José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum in Hato Rey, González Colón devoted part of her speech to attacking her leading opponent in the November general election, Juan Dalmau Ramírez, who is running for governor under the Alliance between the Citizen Victory Movement and the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP). The NPP has advanced a campaign in which the party says a vote for Dalmau will bring communism to Puerto Rico.
She also discussed the blackouts impacting Puerto Ricans daily.
“I do not want the blackouts that are the order of the day in Puerto Rico. I do not want you to have to spend [money] on generators or on [solar] panels. It is time to solve the electricity problem,” she said. “I took charge in Congress of receiving and seeking more than $18 billion to fix our electrical grid. They have not been spent. If you give me the strength in November, I will take charge of solving the electricity problem. And if you give me the strength in November, so that it is clear to everyone, including those who want to put words in my mouth, I tell you that LUMA is leaving, that they are going out.”
González Colón said she will end LUMA Energy’s tenure by appointing a czar who will gather information and who will coordinate with federal and state agencies to find other private operators for the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, “so that when they leave we will not be left without electricity, so that there is a transition and it will cost the people of Puerto Rico less.”
“There are others who promise what I have been telling our people for two years; the difference is that they talk, but the one who knows how to do things is this one who is here,” the current resident commissioner said.
Referring to Dalmau, González Colón warned that “the communist left of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba wants to get involved in Puerto Rico with candidates who have run three times.”
“I laugh because they talk about a new homeland and under a new homeland Hugo Chávez came to power in Venezuela,” she said, chastising Dalmau for trying to downplay his support for Puerto Rican independence. “And they pretend, they have already removed the PIP insignia and the insignia of independence from the PIP candidate’s pamphlets.”
“Before, he talked about independence, and now they are hiding in the closet so that people don’t think that if he won, Puerto Rico would not become a republic,” the pro-statehood candidate for governor said. “This election, this election is not for Jenniffer González, it is not for the Popular Democratic Party. This election is about whether the people of Puerto Rico want the communist left with the examples of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, or want and treasure their American citizenship, permanent union with the United States of America.”
Speaking about the Popular Democratic Party (PDP), González Colón said that “when they had the opportunity, they led us to bankruptcy and now it is up to us to get out of that bankruptcy and get the oversight board out.”
Regarding the Department of Education, she said “I am going to remove the federal receivership from the Department of Education and we are going to modernize all the schools, not just one.”
“And we will do it in English, science, mathematics and technology,” she said.
“I put myself at your service so that it is God who governs Puerto Rico, so that not my will is done, but his, so that all public servants comply with his mandate and help our people,” González Colón said.
Former Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz called upon the conservative electorate not to think of a single legislator to defend morality and the family but to vote for the list of New Progressive senators. He also urged Dalmau to defend Puerto Rican independence just as he supports statehood, calling him a coward.
“I want to address the people in Puerto Rico, the Christian and conservative. We are the only party that, through actions, not words, through work, not promises, has defended the Puerto Rican family, its principles, and its values consistently on every occasion,” Rivera Schatz said. “To ensure their defense, you have to cast a helpful vote. You will not achieve anything with one senator, with one representative. Here, we have 22 senators who will work for the Puerto Rican principles, values and promise.”
“The useful vote, the intelligent vote, I repeat, the useful vote, the intelligent vote for the permanent union and for the family, is a single cross under the palm tree, on the three ballots,” he added.
After calling on the thousands of statehood supporters who packed the Choliseo in the middle of the assembly to cast a comprehensive vote for the NPP, Gurabo Mayor Rosacheli Rivera thanked González Colón for trusting her and giving her a vote of confidence to be ratified as the new vice president of the party.
“And today we are a living example because today comes before you the next governor of all Puerto Ricans,” she said. “A brave, committed, battle-tested woman, like you and me, with a history, a beautiful history of sacrifice and above all of hope for each and every Puerto Rican. As I have believed in her, I ask all Puerto Ricans and good statehood supporters to give her a vote of confidence so that Puerto Rico can move forward. I thank her for the opportunity today to become and ratify myself as vice president of this party to give back to this party the good things that I have received and that I have been able to give to my people of Gurabo. Definitely, I have an unwavering commitment to the permanent union with the United States and above all because we have to defend the rights that make us American citizens.”
Bayamón Mayor Ramón Luis Rivera reiterated the importance of everyone voting on Nov. 5 in favor of González Colón, whom he described as a leader with, above all, “a noble heart.”
He urged the ratification of the NPP government platform.
“But there is a party that defends the people, a party that creates total freedom for human beings, with a candidate for governor who began to present a government program before the primaries,” he said. “A government program that you will ratify today of social justice, of lower taxes, of improvements in health, in education, for young people, for the elderly, a true program for the future of Puerto Rico as a candidate who has the intellectual capacity, who comes from a home where her parents were teachers and can understand how the middle class has to work day by day to improve their quality of life.”
Politicians by nature are audacious but the manner in which the NPP convention is described, I believe set up a new record; one thing is to lean one way or the other and another to give a pig in a poke. There were folks whose speech was in opposition to their political and individual actions; others, offered everything you can think off even when some of the promises they already got them for PR, like LUMA.
The NPP's audacity was in full display, according to the Star Staff writer(s), in multiple and diverse instances; when the Resident Commissioner promise to "eradicate communism from PR," a failed 126-year-old goal of the US, she is just recycling the "cucos" (bogeyman) strategy of…