Primaries
Eduardo Bhatia will run for mayor of San Juan
By Ela Dutt

Eduardo Bhatia Gautier

Eduardo Bhatia Gautier, 39, won his party’s nomination last Nov. 10, and is now in a heated race to become mayor of San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory. Bhatia’s father, Mohinder Bhatia, an economist and retired professor, came to Puerto Rico in 1957.

The Caribbean island that Spain ceded to the U.S. back in 1898 and to whose inhabitants received U.S. citizenship in 1917, is electing a new mayor for San Juan on Nov. 2, and Bhatia, selected by the Popular Democratic Party, has promised to make education and efficient local government his priority. His opponent is incumbent Republican Jorge Santini from the New Progressive Party.

Born in San Salvador, Republic of El Savador, on May 16, 1964, Bhatia told News India-Times, he had visited India once and went to Lucknow and Chandigarh where his uncles lived. “I had a little bit of Indian influence, but most of that was from my Indian friends in Princeton,” Bhatia said.

Back in 1957, his father came as an assistant to a Syracuse University professor who had been in India on a one-year sabbatical, and he remained in Puerto Rico, married Carmen Gautier, a political science professor at the University of Puerto Rico, in 1960. Bhatia’s mother passed away 10 years ago.

“There was not a large Indian population in Puerto Rico. Now there are more. There’s a funny story ----- when I was running for the Senate back in 1996, I put up signs all over saying ‘vote for Bhatia.’ A man with the name Bhatia, who had been made head of Unilever company, flew into Puerto Rico for some conference and wondered what was going on. He was very nice. People at the conference called me over to meet him and he said he was thrilled that so far away from India, there was an Indian running for election,” Bhatia recalled.

“It is extremely nice to have contact with two cultures,” Bhatia said. “I must say I did get some, even though few, Indian traditions from my father, in the sense that I do have a similar way of looking at the world ----- I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I feel more spiritual, more human and less materialistic, and there is a big emphasis on family.”

Bhatia married a Panamanian attorney, Isabel Cristina Fernandez, last year. He has two siblings, his brother Andres Bhatia is a practicing oncologist in Gainesville, Florida, and his sister Lisa Bhatia is an assistant U.S. attorney at the San Juan District office of the U.S. Attorney.

Bhatia’s lost to his current opponent in 2000 when he tried to get elected to the mayoral office, but, as he noted, it was only by a margin of 1 percent, or some 3,000 votes.

“So I have the momentum,” he said, but conceded: It’s going to be a tough election.” Under Puerto Rican law, he must raise $1.5 million and, so far “I have raised about 10 percent of it. I am moving and I have a number of fundraisers planned.” One of his fundraisers is in New York around May 25, 2004.

Bhatia was admitted to the bar in Puerto Rico in 1991, in Washington, D.C., and the state of Florida in 1990, as well as to the U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit, in 1991.

A graduate of Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (B.A., 1986), and a Fulbright Scholar in Chile (1986-87), Bhatia received his law degree from Stanford Law School (J.D., 1990).

Fluent in Spanish and English, Bhatia has a Spanish lilt in his speech.

“In terms of my father’s background, I can tell you that after obtaining his Ph.D. from Lucknow University in the late 1950’s, my father came to Puerto Rico from India to work His father was also on President John F. Kennedy’s team of Alliance for Progress, a program for developing countries in Latin America.

Mohinder Bhatia had been a member of the Puerto Rico Planning Board and the Alliance was using the Puerto Rican model for Latin America. As part of the Alliance, Mohinder Bhatia traveled to several Latin American countries, which explains why Eduardo was born in San Salvador.

In this race for mayor, Bhatia said, “I have a very big emphasis on education. Fifty percent of Puerto Rican children drop out of school. I want to be mayor for 12 years to make sure that those who entered school leave after graduating.”

A former Senator ) of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Bhatia won his party’s nomination against Roberto Vigoreaux by a huge margin, and the party factions are now solidly behind him.

At his victory party last November, his opponent Vigoreaux said, “He is an excellent candidate for the mayor of San Juan, and there will be a union between all the people who voted for me and voted for him so that we can recover the capital in 2004.”

Bhatia served as Law Clerk for Boston Circuit Court of Appeals Appellate Judge Levin Campbell; was the interim director for the Resident Commissioner’s Office in Washington; had his own private practice apart from his political ventures. Last year, he married to Panamanian attorney.

Puerto Ricans have self-governing rights, but the nearly four million citizens do not have a representative in the U.S. Congress.