Posted on 04/28/2008 11:00:35 AM PDT by Ebenezer
(English-language translation)
Puerto Rico is sending a message that it wants to break its relationship with the United States. That was the first reaction from Puerto Rican Congressman José Serrano following Governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá’s speech during the [pro-Commonwealth] Popular Democratic Party (PPD) general assembly he convened to announce his political future after being indicted by federal authorities on March 27, and whose [run for a second term] was ratified viva voce by 4,027 delegates, becoming the first candidate to the governorship to be indicted on criminal charges. As Serrano told Notiuno during his first interview, “….he will be taken seriously in Washington. They will start to question if Puerto Rico wants to break its relationship with the United States.” Serrano added that “I thought this was the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) assembly” and implied the Governor has two faces when stating that “the Aníbal I saw yesterday was not the same one I saw in Congress.” [Acevedo was Puerto Rico’s Resident Commissioner in Washington from 2001 to 2005.]
For his part, [pro-statehood] New Progressive Party (PNP) Chairman Luis Fortuño questioned “what moral authority [Acevedo] has to speak first about dignity when he is indicted by the federal authorities, second about [Puerto Rico’s political] status when he has blocked every effort to address the status in Congress, and third about changes when he has left the island broke.” Fortuño, who will challenge the Governor in the upcoming elections, told “Notiuno in the Morning” that any candidate the PPD chooses is all right with him.
Meanwhile, PIP gubernatorial candidate Edwin Irizarry Mora reacted during journalist Carmen Jovet’s radio show. “It shames me above all that [Acevedo] uses figures of the Puerto Rican independence movement to portray himself as a Messiah before the people of Puerto Rico.” To Irizarry, the decision by the PPD to keep Acevedo as its gubernatorial candidate was not unanimous. “The faces I saw at the event were those of disgust, of frustration,” he said.
During the assembly, the Governor wasted no time in criticizing the federal government and demanding a redefinition of the Commonwealth. His speech resembled that of a pro-independence leader, since he recalled that the federal authorities found no irregularities in the murder of two young pro-independence men in Cerro Maravilla [in 1978] and even the death of Machetero leader Filiberto Ojeda at the hands of federal agents. “The first legislation the PPD Legislative Assembly will pass is to convene a Constitutional Assembly so that it may address this [status] problem once and for all. [Both houses of the Commonwealth Legislature are presently controlled by the PNP]. This party has to tell those who become delegates at the Constitutional Assembly that we want a Commonwealth based on the sovereignty of the people of Puerto Rico,” he stated.
Acevedo, who is running for a second term, managed to neutralize that sector within the party which was calling for his withdrawal, including close to 30 mayors who ended up supporting him. During the assembly, the delegates cried several times “rah-rah-rah, four more years”, thus expressing their disapproval over statements from former Governor Rafael Hernández Colón, who described the assembly as a “pep rally”. The Governor joined in the criticism on several occasions. “Listen closely to me, this is not a pep rally. I will not accept your being told that you were pressured,” Acevedo said as he requested at the same time a vote by secret ballot, which the delegates rejected. [Caguas Mayor] William Miranda Marín was put in charge of the party platform, while [Consumer Affairs Secretary] Alejandro García Padilla was assigned to spread the message to vote by straight ballot.
[Acevedo] asked several times that the reasons that were expressed privately to him for not being the candidate be made public. In fact, he acknowledged for the first time that they have had their doubts about his being the ideal person. “I have had my own doubts at times,” he said. “They are valid arguments from people who mean well for me and this party. Now, I want all of us to really discuss if that is the right decision.”
The Governor and PPD Chairman was accompanied by former party chairs Victoria Muñoz, Miguel Hernández Agosto, and Héctor Luis Acevedo upon his arrival and dominated the 10,000-strong assembly. During the event, money was collected to pay for his defense, with a request for dollars and not cents.
ping
Good, fewer democratic leeches.
——Viva Independencia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Take my island - PLEASE!
Good. As long as they don’t demand that we continue to send them money. Send them on their own way. They never considered themselves Americans anyway. And we still haven’t forgotten Vieques.
Yeh, but what if hillary offers them statehood?
The only problem with independence for Puerto Rico is that every time there is a special election for this the vote is always split 50 - 50.
Sounds like this guy is just spitting into the wind.
I wonder how much he has donated to the Clinton library in anticipation of a pardon.
“
Indicted Puerto Rico Governor Now Demands “Sovereignty” for the Island “
OK, bye!
“Send them on their own way. They never considered themselves Americans anyway.”
Does that mean that all those who are here will be considered illegal aliens and deported to San Juan?
Hillary has a soft spot for Puerto Rican terrorists. If he’s not actually a terrorist and he’s even a Democrat, then he’d be pardoned in a second.
A legal impossibility.
Fine, let them go independent.
What he wants is a sovereignty in which his indictment gets wiped off the books.
He wants a get-out-of-jail-free card. He wants to change the subject.
Let them go. Then all Puerto Ricans on the mainland will become illegal immigrants.
Puerto Rico is a giant welfare state. Good riddance.
Cut the island loose. Better for them and better for us.
If Puerto Rico goes independent, does that mean no more of them will be moving to the state of Florida?
Man, between them and Cubans there is a whole lot of spanish going on here.
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