Patricia Guadalupe Columnist

How if a forum is organized for candidates for the presidency of the country, and scarcely a few do they appear? This is precisely what spent this week when the Hispanic Congressional Institute (CHCI for his initials in English) protected a meeting with the candidates. They had invited all; four deigned in coming, including senator Hillary Clinton, of New York, who according to all the surveys a wide front part goes. In the meeting, Clinton presented several proposals that he says they would help to improve the conditions for the Latin community if she is the elect president, like increases in funds for student loans and increases in health programs, between other things. Clinton enjoys not only a wide front part in the electoral contest, but his front part is even more pronounced inside the Latin community. Nevertheless, which went to see the debate said to be disappointed because other candidates had not given him enough importance to this meeting. “(The senator of Illinois) Barack Obama preferred to be in Iowa on that here speaking with the Latin Americans”, mentioned one of the participants of the conference. And Obama was not the only one that decided not to go. Curiously, the only Latin candidate in the electoral contest, the governor Bill Richardson, of New Mexico, was not either. The candidates who were not lost a good opportunity, since this was the last time that would carry out this meeting before the primary ones. Every absent candidate had his excuse; the most common was that his agenda was too overloaded. The interesting thing of that is that when the group of African American conferees protected a forum similar to the Latin American the previous week, there yes that were all.

But the most worrying thing for those who were waiting for a forum serious and crammed with candidates was the absence of the republicans. Not in painting they appeared. The CHCI is an organization that identifies like not partisan, but as mentioned a republican adviser when one asked him on the absence of his coreligionists who are postulated to the presidency, he said: "Everybody knows that this organization is democratic. There is no republican conferee neither member of the nor CHCI either an approach to the republicans. It is a fantasy to say that it is not partisan organization”. And it added:“ The republicans we are focusing in approaching the Latin community across community groups, and not of the CHCI. That they do not avenge with stories that it is not partisan organization”. To a certain extent, this argument has validity. The format of the forum was not as to have a discussion with political objectivity, since those who were rising the questions to four candidates who came were the same democratic conferees. Although to see a democratic conferee rising a question to a republican candidate had been a presidential debate really.

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