Posted on 05/20/2008 7:35:31 AM PDT by Ebenezer
(English-language translation)
To Governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, Puerto Ricans under the current Commonwealth [status] have to limit themselves to giving the United States "generic consent" over matters that concern the island.
To his understanding, a sovereign Commonwealth would turn these instances of consent into specifics and would delimit the relationship between both countries. That is how he explained the proposed "sovereign Commonwealth" his Popular Democratic Party (PPD) now defends more insistently.
"With U.S. citizenship as a link, we can clearly determine what is the people's power and not what we have had until now, which is a generic consent," the Governor said. "When the Commonwealth was approved, Puerto Rico controlled the price of milk, and it would have occurred to no one that the United States would control the price of milk."
To him, Puerto Rico under a developed Commonwealth would have absolute control over matters such as the price of milk.
"In a development of the Commonwealth, this type of situation should not occur because the competencies Puerto Rico would have would be clearly established," he stated.
The PPD Status Committee recently approved a document that seeks to explain the Commonwealth they would support. In its formula, Puerto Rico would define in specific terms its relationship with the United States, all this without abandoning U.S. citizenship.
"The element of sovereignty means that the power of a nation over its affairs rests ultimately with its people. Addressing the matter of Puerto Rico's [political] status must begin by recognizing that sovereignty falls on the people of Puerto Rico," the document indicates. "In exercising this sovereignty, our people may associate (sovereign Commonwealth), separate (independence), or integrate (statehood)."
"What [the PPD] stresses," said Acevedo, "is to culminate the agenda of [Commonwealth founder] Luis Muñoz Marín's generation which, from the beginning, understood the need to solve the problem of generic consent."
Acevedo makes no sense. This is the same decades-old smokescreening by the PPD with plenty of high-sounding rhetoric and no concrete proposals in the end.
ping
the u.s. needs to spin off puerto rico.
bye.
Puerto Rico has only three choices: status quo, statehood or independence.
A more sensible approach is to abandon the status-quo crutch altogether and make Puerto Ricans decide between statehood or independence. As long as the Commonwealth is kept as a viable status option, the island will not make a mature decision as to its political relationship with the United States.
This is an educated guy, who theoretically should know he is talking nonsense.
But guys like this get elected year after year talking exactly this kind of nonsense, and no one out in Oprahland is smart enough to realize they are being played.
They can never deliver on their promises, they either don't try if they're smart, or they do try and do damage without any result. Usually they threaten to try, and the industries involved pay them under the table for the privilege of being left alone, which while technically I suppose thats "corruption", under the circumstances its the best outcome available.
People elect corruption, they just don't always realize they are doing it. Corruption is the grease that makes an irrational system work. People vote for corruption when they vote for things that government can't deliver.
At a certain level, I sympathise with the guy. I am no fan of campaign finance laws. But one of the things that make them so bad is that they are complex enough that almost everyone falls afoul of them. The other is that enforcing them inevitably is going to take on the air of a political witch-hunt.
If the offending party wins, who is going to investigate him? And if the offending party loses, going after them after an electoral loss is going to look like political piling on, like the winner is just using his power of office to attack his enemies.
The McCain finance laws are bad news. But the answer is to get rid of them. If you’re being hammered for something like this, I could understand why you’d suddenly want to be protected from bad federal law.
I know Acevedo is accused of lying to investigators, but after Libby, and after Ramos/Compean, that doesn’t impress me much anymore. I don’t give federal investigators the benefit of the doubt I once did.
He has 19 felony counts against him, the least of which are related directly to campaign finances. We’re talking about outright tax evasion, falsification of documents, conspiracy to defraud the IRS, the FEC and the PR-CEE. It is expected that the next superceding indictment will include perjury and obstruction to justice.
Hardly an acceptable rap sheet for someone who’s supposed to be the top law enforcement officer in the island government.
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