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Friday, April 15, 2011

The Upcoming Status Plebiscites

It is imperative that Puerto Rico act to resolve the Island’s century-old status problem. Recently, Governor Luis Fortuño, with the unanimous backing of the PNP’s Executive Committee, announced that he will submit legislation to authorize a two-stage plebiscite process on the Island. It is critically important that the people of Puerto Rico understand the rationale behind
this decision.

By 2010, in the wake of the historic passage of H.R. 2499 by the U.S. House of Representatives and the written expressions of the two key leaders in the U.S. Senate regarding our status options, the time to take local action had arrived. Nevertheless, we decided to wait for the President’s Task Force on Puerto Rico Status to issue its report in order to take its recommendations into consideration.

The White House report contains multiple conclusions and recommendations. At the outset, the Task Force declares that the status issue “is of overwhelming importance to the people of Puerto Rico” and says it “believes that it is time for Puerto Rico to take the next step in the history of its status and its relationship to the rest of the United States.” The Task Force further states that “the long-term economic well-being of Puerto Rico would be dramatically improved by an early decision on the status question.”

In its first recommendation, the Task Force affirms that all relevant parties should work to ensure that the people of Puerto Rico “are able to express their will about status options and have that will acted upon by the end of 2012 or soon thereafter.” The Task Force expressly recognizes the right of our people to address the status issue on the local level and recommends that “the President and Congress support any fair, transparent, and swift effort that is consistent with and reflects the will of the people of Puerto Rico.”

In addition, the Task Force concludes that the four status options available to Puerto Rico are statehood, independence, free association and the current status. Although it is obvious that we will not solve our status problem by retaining the current status, the Task Force correctly observes that “[s]omething must be done to fulfill the desire of the people of Puerto Rico to change status or to establish, for some period of time, that they have chosen no change in status.”

In its third recommendation, the Task Force expresses a preference for a two-stage plebiscite process to determine the will of the people, “the first of which would narrow the options and the second of which would make a final decision.” This process would guarantee that the result has the support of the majority of voters and sends a clear and unambiguous message.

The Task Force report suggests various ways to proceed within the two-plebiscite structure, including the following:

1) A process like the one called for in the House-passed version of H.R. 2499, where voters are asked in a first plebiscite if they want to retain or change the current status and, if they choose the latter, are asked in a second plebiscite to express their preference among the four available options.

2) A first plebiscite between the three “change” options—statehood, independence, and free association—with the winner of that plebiscite facing off against the current status in a second plebiscite.

3) A first plebiscite where voters are asked if they want to continue to remain a part of the United States. If they vote yes in the first plebiscite, a second plebiscite would be held between statehood and the current status. If they vote no in the first plebiscite, the second plebiscite would be held between independence and free association.

We, the members of the Executive Committee, chose the second option because it is the most fair. In the first round, all of the “change” options would be before the voters. In the second round, the winning option would share the ballot with the current status, so the people can decide whether they would prefer to change the current status or maintain it for a period of additional time. The first plebiscite will be held this year and the second plebiscite will be held in early 2013, once the general elections have been held and so a newly-elected Congress will have time to respond to the results.

It is important to pay close attention to the Task Force’s conclusions with respect to our status options. The Task Force was clear that the current status—known as “Commonwealth” in English and “Estado Libre Asociado” in Spanish—is subject to Congress’s plenary powers under the Territory Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and that the fundamental basis of the “Enhanced Commonwealth” proposal—namely, the establishment of a covenant whose terms could not be later changed by Congress without Puerto Rico’s consent—would encounter constitutional problems. In addition, the Task Force states that the U.S. government should “ensure that Puerto Rico controls its own cultural and linguistic identity” if the Island is admitted as a state. And, finally, the Task Force states that were Puerto Rico to become a fully independent nation or a freely associated state, the federal government should commit to preserving the U.S. citizenship of Island residents who are U.S. citizens at the time of any transition.

Our people should head to the polls determined to resolve our status dilemma and to demand that Congress accede to our expressed will. Thirteen years after we last expressed ourselves on the issue, the moment to decide our political destiny is upon us. The upcoming plebiscite process is as just as it is necessary.