Granados' shoe box and politics in P.R.
Published on Sunday, June 20th 1999 on The San Juan StarPolitics and the electoral process are Puerto Rico's foremost national sports. More ink, video and radio air time is spent on politics and political figures than on the positive values of the rest of our society. Political chisme is a better news item than the environment, except when the environment also becomes a political chisme. Our political figures are more famous –and more infamous– than our performers. Being in politics has become a career for some, and a dynasty for others. They keep insisting that our democratic rights assure us that anybody who wants to enter politics can enter, but this is not necessarily so. Anybody who wants to enter politics may do so, provided they can afford to campaign.
Campaigning is tough. I remember when Luis Muñoz Marín based a campaign on black coffee. Yes, "café puya", it was called. Muñoz would visit with our humble jíbaro mountain folk, drink black coffee with them, and get elected. The coffee was provided by the jíbaros, not by Muñoz. Black coffee was not too expensive. And television did not yet exist.
More expensive campaigns back then involved shoes. Yes, shoes. Shoes were more expensive than black coffee. A pair of shoes would buy a candidate a vote. Hey, some of our people did not have shoes back then. More recently, votes have been bought with refrigerators. The gift of a refrigerator would assure a candidate that all the voters in that household would vote for him. Refrigerators are more expensive than shoes.
Today votes have to be bought with all of the above and a lot more. And the "more" consists of an image projection and publicity exposure that can cost millions of dollars. Yes, today we have television. And radio, and newspapers, and sound trucks, and aircraft streamers, and bumper stickers, and stickies, and posters in four-color separation. And "avanzadas", and blazoned T-shirts, and brochures in four-color separations, and give-aways, and leave-behinds. The thin line between what is political campaigning and what is political-figure marketing has disappeared. Today, political campaigning is nothing but marketing. Marketing plus advertising. Both are very expensive. Being expensive, both require heavy doses of cash if a candidate is to succeed.
So much so that, in a candidate's support team, the most important component is the fund raising or finance committee. Not the platform committee, nor the strategy committee, nor the legislative drafting committee, no. Money. And this has been the case since as far back as I can remember.
All of us have seen party sympathizers –of all party colors– with their flags and their little cans at a stop light begging for coins. All of us have seen radio- or tele-marathons for one party or another, begging for coins. All of us have been invited to fund raisers of varying magnitudes and costs, begging for coins. And if you don't come up with the coins, you are disloyal to the candidate and to the party.
Money for marketing and for advertising the candidate has become so important that it has become a qualifier. You have money? Run. You can't raise money? Don't run. A candidate for mayor of San Juan, a political unknown, has openly expressed that his chances of winning are excellent, simply because he has three million dollars in his campaign kitty; a sum he is quite confident his opponents cannot raise.
Today José Granados Navedo has egg in the face because he admitted to receiving a box full of cash for his campaign from someone involved in the very notorious AIDS Institute trial. Maybe what was at fault is that his cash came in a box, and the campaign money that other candidates raise does not come in boxes. Was Granados' crime accepting the box himself? I have known of candidates that welcome all donations, but never touch them themselves. Like, "Yeah, thanks, but give it to my finance manager here." Was Granados' crime that his box had more money than the other guy's box? Was Granados' crime that he is as zealous a campaigner as he is a fund raiser?
I am not exculpating Granados. All I am asking is for the candidate who is without sin to come forth and cast the first stone. Will the candidate who has never accepted cash donations for his campaign please rise! No technicalities like, "No, I never accepted them. My finance manager accepted them. I don't touch donations."
We are all to blame for Granados' fault. We have all been suckered into political campaigns that have very little to do with the merits of each candidate. We have all been suckered into believing that campaigning is advertising. We have been suckered into campaigns that are no more that popularity and beauty contests.
The solutions are exquisitely simple, but no one will accept them. Not the media, not the candidates, not the parties, not you. Try it. What if campaigning were restricted to one week before the election? What if advertising were restricted to one thousand dollars per candidate? What if the media gave equal space and equal time slots to all candidates, during one week only, and for free?
I hear your laughter.