Caribbean & Central America - 16 November 2004

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 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. 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 but 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 he served as an advisor to former governor Rafael Hernández Colón before being elected to the House of Representatives in 1992 representing the PPD. 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.