By The Star Staff
Angel Matos García, the majority leader in the island House of Representatives, said Monday that Health Secretary Carlos Mellado López’s decision not to run for resident commissioner under the New Progressive Party (NPP) banner bodes well for the Popular Democratic Party candidate for the D.C. post.
Mellado López acknowledged earlier Monday in the press that although he had flirted with the possibility of a run for resident commissioner under the NPP, he prefers to stay in the department he currently heads.
“Assuming that current [Resident] Commissioner Jenniffer González will challenge Gov. Pedro Pierluisi for the gubernatorial candidacy, the NPP now has to look for two candidates for resident commissioner, one who answers to Pierluisi and another who answers to Jenniffer,” Matos García said.
The Carolina legislator argued that the campaign message of the PDP candidate for resident commissioner, Pablo José Hernández Rivera, so far “has been solidly received inside and outside the Popular Party” and makes him the clear favorite in next year’s elections over whoever the NPP candidate ends up being.
“We have to have in the federal capital someone with the goal of reactivating the local economy, after 20 years of [resident] commissioners who refused to work for that issue [in order instead] to concentrate on [Puerto Rico’s political] status, and they left us without the rope and without the goat,” Matos García said. “Nor did they attend to economic development, and the illusion of statehood looks farther away every day, as Pierluisi admitted over the weekend.”