Caribbean & Central America
The race for the governorship of Puerto Rico still hangs in the balance. The elections were submitted to a recount on 8 November because so little separated the two candidates and the result is unlikely to be declared until late December. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, who is in favour of keeping Puerto Rico's commonwealth status, took 48.38% of the vote while the pro-statehood former Governor Pedro Rosselló took 48.18%.
With just 0.2 of a percentage point, or 3,880 votes, separating the two men the electoral commission was obliged to launch a lengthy process of verification of the electoral lists to see whether 30,000 uncounted ballots were legally cast. Any election with a margin less than half a point is subject to an automatic recount. But the recount will only begin once the outcome of the election is known provided that the margin is still within half a point.
Rosselló's Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP) took control of the legislature from Acevedo Vilá's Partido Popular Democrático (PPD), winning 18 seats in the 27-member Senate and 34 in the 51-member House of Representatives.
The two men
Rosselló was born on 5 April 1944 in San Juan. He graduated from the university of Notre Dame in 1966 and obtained a doctorate in medicine in 1970 from Yale university. He began his political career in 1988 with the PNP and became president of the party between 1991 and 1999. He served two terms as governor between 1993 and 2001. His biggest success was bringing unemployment down from 20% to 9.2%, partly through attracting foreign investment for big urban projects. He also carried out major healthcare reform. Various privatisation initiatives were deeply unpopular: the sale of the Puerto Rico Telephone Company (PRTC) in 1998 triggered a general strike. Several members of his second administration were arrested on corruption charges. Although he himself remained untouched, Roselló decided not to run for a third term in 2000. In 2003, he won the PNP primary elections against Carlos Pesquera. He has vowed once again to campaign for statehood for Puerto Rico. During his first two terms, he called two referendums on Puerto Rico's status. He failed to get the clear-cut option for statehood on both occasions; the majority of Puerto Ricans are content with the status quo - an estado libre asociado, or commonwealth.
Acevedo Vilá was born on 13 February 1962 in Hato Rey. He obtained a degree in political science from the University of Puerto Rico in 1979 and completed his postgraduate studies in law at Harvard university in 1985. He married Luisa Gándara, with whom he had two children, Gabriela and Juan Carlos. In 1989 he served as an advisor to former governor Rafael Hernández Colón before being elected to the House of Representatives in 1992 representing the PPD. He served on a number of government commissions. In 1997, he became the president of the PPD but in 1999 he ceded this title to Sila Calderón, the incumbent governor, and assumed the vice-presidency. He defeated José Alfredo Hernández Mayoral in the PPD party primary.