With less than a month to go before the elections, it is time for those who aspire to take charge of the country’s destiny to finally begin to go into the substance of their plans and explain in detail their proposals.

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Lee este artículo en español.

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Unfortunately, this has not been the case. The campaign has passed between attacks, superficiality, vague if not unrealizable promises, propagation of fears and even lies. Our society certainly does not deserve this flat spectacle.

It should not be necessary to remind the aspirants what our main problems are, because they, like us, live here and know them. But since they seem determined not to go into any of them in depth, perhaps it might be worthwhile to map them out.

One of our biggest problems, if not the biggest, is the fragility of the electrical grid, mainly due to old plants that do not produce the necessary power. What are they going to do to solve the real problem, which is generation, not transmission, which has so many consequences on our collective life?

The only response of the candidates is the cancellation of the LUMA Energy contract, a proposal very difficult to fulfill, for many reasons, among them that the governor unfortunately does not have the authority to cancel any contract just like that. Pure demagogy. It is more than clear that the only one who can cancel this contract is the Fiscal Oversight Board.

We cannot forget either that in the end, Judge Laura Taylor Swain can appoint a trustee, as the creditors have been requesting for some time. That trustee would end up deciding everything. Thus, we will be left with less than the creditors.

If the Board or the court objects or LUMA demonstrates that it is in compliance with the contract, what is Plan B? If cancellation is achieved, what comes next? The candidates have been ambiguous, or parsimonious, or even mute, when posed with these tremendous complications.

The economy is another issue on which the candidates have not been specific. When asked to explain what they propose to revive an economy that has been in recession for two decades, even if it has had a momentary, and temporary, respite thanks to disaster recovery funds, they remain generalities.

Does anyone know what, specifically, the challengers are proposing to accelerate the pace of recovery beyond making it “faster”? We have not heard a diagnosis of the causes of the delay, such as may be the absence in local agencies of technical capacity to navigate the federal bureaucracy, which has been the case in the highly politicized administrative layers of government. In addition, permitting remains another obstacle that leaves money stranded at FEMA.

How are we going to prevent our young people from leaving us and the population from continuing to age? How do we prevent them from believing that it is not worth staying here because they cannot find work?

We have no details, either, about how the candidates propose to depoliticize government, improve performance in schools, or solve campus infrastructure problems. Similar statements can be made about climate change, business climate, doctor shortages, insecurity, corruption and so many other problems.

Some of the candidates have presented what they call “government programs”. But, with rare exceptions, they revert to generalities and evasions when asked for details.

Enough is enough. Four weeks may be enough for them to change the tone of the campaign, stop the attacks and dedicate themselves, from now on, to discuss in depth our problems, which are not few, nor simple, nor secret.

Puerto Rico deserves no less. Stop the tirade and demagoguery and speak clearly to a people who are tired of the same thing, who deserve solutions and who are not disrespected with shouting that stuns but does not build.

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This content was translated from Spanish to English using artificial intelligence and was reviewed by an editor before being published.