Editorial About PR Status in Connecticut Newspaper

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Boricua Master
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Subject: Editorial About PR Status in Connecticut Newspaper
posted by BoricuaMaster on Wednesday, April 16th 2008 @ 1:45 PM

Turmoil In Puerto Rico
EditoriaL, The Hartford Courant
April 15, 2008

Puerto Rico's unsettled political status colors every major event that takes place there, including the U.S. Department of Justice's charging incumbent Gov. Anibal Acevedo-Vila with 19 counts of campaign finance fraud.

Mr. Acevedo-Vila is the leader of the island's Popular Democratic Party, which favors Puerto Rico's current status as a self-governing U.S. commonwealth and is aligned with the Democratic Party in the United States. His supporters believe the case is politically motivated and timed to bring about his defeat in November.

Mr. Acevedo Vila is said to have awarded contracts to Philadelphia-area businessmen in exchange for illegal campaign donations. He is also said to have spent more than he reported to federal elections regulators and to have used campaign money for personal expenses.

The Democrat-controlled House Judiciary Committee is scrutinizing whether the Justice Department's conduct was politically driven in this prosecution as well as in its bribery conviction against former Alabama Gov. Donald Siegelman, a successful Democrat in a Republican state. Mr. Siegelman was released from prison last month pending his appeal.

If the specter of political influence isn't enough, there's the perennial status question — should Puerto Rico be a commonwealth, a state or an independent nation? — lurking in the background. Pending legislation in Congress, as suggested by a special White House Task Force on Puerto Rico's Political Status, proposes to resolve the status issue through a two-stage referendum. The first ballot would ask Puerto Rican voters whether they want to change the current arrangement of being a commonwealth. If the majority votes yes, a second ballot would ask them to decide between becoming the 51st state or an independent country.

Mr. Acevedo-Vila sees the proposal as stacked against commonwealth. He prefers an "enhanced commonwealth" that would allow Puerto Ricans to retain U.S. citizenship while being free to set their own foreign and trade policies and opt out of certain federal laws, to be negotiated with Congress.

The task force maintained that "enhanced commonwealth" violates the U.S. Constitution.

Criminal charges against a sitting governor in the United States would typically be grounds to call for his resignation. That's not the case in Puerto Rico.

After the accusations against Mr. Acevedo-Vila were unsealed, supporters cheered him on as though he were a conquering hero and urged him to stay in the re-election race. Newspapers asked that voters not allow the charges to distract them from issues like the faltering economy and unemployment. Demands that he step down came mostly from his anti-commonwealth opponents, who traditionally have found more support for their pro-statehood status option among U.S. Republicans.

Thus we have a multisided spectacle. Many people in Puerto Rico see the indictment as an intrusion into the island's affairs by an American government, whose president they cannot vote for and in whose Congress they have no voting representation.

When they cast their ballots for governor in November, some will view the intrusion as a bigger crime than whether Mr. Acevedo-Vila misused campaign funds.
http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/hc-puertorico.artapr15,0,5577958.story

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