An Editorial from NotiCel.

Yes, what we had with the certification of the fiscal plans was not a jump into the void, it was a shove.

A jump is a voluntary act, it requires conscience and conscience requires knowledge and comprehension. And enough knowledge of the basis of those plans is what the people did not, and still don’t, have. That is why what we were given by the Rosselló Administration and the Fiscal Control Board (FCB) was a shove into the void.

Many pixels and yells through megaphones have been wasted in highlighting that the Board was imposed without the vote of the Puerto Rican people, something that is not to be taken lightly. But, are we better off in this process with the Governor and the Legislative Assembly, for whom we did vote?

When the Governor submitted his plan, what efforts did he or the elected representatives of the people made to defend the scientific basis of his proposal and to explain his strategies to the public, as a means of generating consent? How did they explain how the strategies contained in said plan were the correct ones to pull us out of the bankruptcy process in the most effective and fastest route possible?

If it hurts to know that the Puerto Ricans did not vote for the Board nor for those who imposed it, more brutally antidemocratic is that everyone involved, the Board and our elected representatives, are reaching conclusions and taking decisions with absolute disregard to the consent of the people, who will in turn suffer the implementation of a plan, that more than a fiscal plan, is a life sentence.

Governor Ricardo Rosselló, who has been operating for a long time now under a media strategy to preserve his political image instead of assuming his responsibilities as maximum representative of the people of Puerto Rico, used the ‘Nay’ vote by Board member Ana Matosantos to state that what was certified was a #PlanSinConcenso (#PlanwithoutConsent). But, what about the plan he submitted?… Who consented to it? That social dialogue never occurred.

Let us remember that the Governor submitted these plans and the Board approved them with slight alterations, even though we have not had an the audited financial statements for the Government of Puerto Rico since 2015, which reduces the contents in these plans to wishful thinking and enchantments.

Above that, the plans were submitted and certified without anyone defining oficially which are the ‘essential services’ that must be preserved in the bankruptcy process. Neither did the board nor the government established convincingly how the plans would give way to the reactivation of the economic development of the island.

Even worse, the plans were also submitted and certified without neither the government nor the FCB giving an official report on the negotiation process with the island’s creditors and what are the impasses or the opportunities there.

It is also implied that the people have allowed themselves to be marginalized in this process. We, as a collective, have not paid enough attention to this process, which could cost us our lives.

And we are not referring to ‘taking the streets’ because that has demonstrated to be a sterile calling in Puerto Rico today and has also proven to be an ineffective strategy in other societies which have faced this kind of intervention.

We mean taking the forums efficiently. Ample assistance to the Board’s meetings has not been registered, an effective lobbying has not been established and the FCB has not faced enough intelligent opposition in the bankruptcy case by sectors that represent the interests of the people as a whole, instead of the particular interests of several creditor classes.

We ourselves in the media are not devoid of fault in this analysis.

Media outlets have an ethical right to question. Giving up on that right is an act of treason. The certification of these plans makes this obligation more urgent and more constant. He who has not lost his calling, does not have to search new routes to fulfill his duty. We cannot be like the hermit crab, that at any small push, hides away in his shell until the danger has passed.

The people cannot be asked to surrender their reasoning without having clear the fundamentals of what is decided and how it is best for them. Without this what would be dominating would not be reason, but improvisation, which is precisely what has brought us to this current predicament. We cannot ask the people that, like the hermit crab, they fold into a process which has been filled more with smoke than with concreteness and transparency.

The certification of these plans is not an end, it is the beginning of the biggest period of responsibility that has befallen the people of Puerto Rico, the responsibility to activate themselves, to be vigilant of everything that occurs with these plans and the bankruptcy case. He who lives in this patch of land, and wishes to continue living here, does not have a more urgent calling than this.