UPDATE — A sea of confusion envelops upcoming plebiscite in Puerto Rico

Posted on November 2, 2012 By Rocio Gonzalez Environment, Puerto Rico

Luis Fortuno - Plebiscite

Puerto Rican Gov. Luis Fortuno. The upcoming plebiscite to determine Puerto Rico’s political status is a complicated matter, difficult to understand because of the way it will be presented.

(UPDATE) Three days away from the election, the three main political parties in Puerto Rico have entered the home stretch of the campaign — for a general election that this time around also includes a plebiscite on status — and are desperate to sway undecided voters who are still wondering what status option is best for them.

There is still much confusion among the electorate. This plebiscite to determine Puerto Rico’s political status is a complicated matter, difficult to understand because of the way it will be presented, and not expected to lead anywhere in the long run.

Puerto Rico is officially called the Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico—Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in English—which in the island is usually referred to as the ELA. It has been this way since 1952, when the island’s constitution was enacted.

In 60 years, there have been three plebiscites seeking to solve status. The most recent one was in December 1998, and the majority of voters chose the fifth and last option provided—none of the above. Statehood came in second place.

“My opinion is that this is a plebiscite different to the ones presented in other years,” said Professor Carmelo Delgado from the University of Puerto Rico Law School. Delgado is also a former executive director of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture.

“Previously, they would pose the traditional options—free associated state, independence, statehood,” he told VOXXI. “This plebiscite is designed to reject the ELA or revalidate it.”

Puerto Rico plebiscite

The ballot for the plebiscite on status. Voters must choose whether they agree whether the current status and determine which status they would prefer instead of the current one.

The plebiscite will consist of two questions:

  • Do you agree that Puerto Rico should continue to have its present form of territorial status?
  • Regardless of your selection in the first question, please mark which of the following non-territorial options you would prefer.

Even if voters say they agree with the current status in the first question, they still have to choose from three options in which the current status is not included. The options offered are statehood, independence or sovereign free associated state.

Puerto Rico plebiscite

The second question of the plebiscite asks voters to choose a new political status regardless of whether they agree with the current one.

Delgado explained that there could be confusion because voters could confuse the option of a sovereign free associated state with the current ELA.

“I have no hope that the political status of Puerto Rico will be solved with this plebiscite,” Delgado said. “I don’t believe that. There has not been an adequate education campaign so the people of Puerto Rico can fully understand the alternatives, because that has been up to those who back each formula, and some have more money than others.

“In any case, I don’t think the United States—the federal government and the groups of power there—are truly committed to solve the political and constitutional problem in Puerto Rico.”

In Puerto Rico, political preference is often divided three ways: those who favor statehood, who identify with the New Progressive Party (PNP); those who favor free association with the United States, who identify with the Popular Democratic Party (PPD); and those who favor independence, who side with the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP).

Historically, a very low percentage of voters have supported independence. Statehooders think Puerto Rico should have the same rights as a state, and want the island to  become one. Some of those who are pro-ELA think everything should stay as it is, others think the same, except with more rights, such as being able to make decisions when it comes to the merchant navy.

The PPD’s official stance is to vote for “Yes” in the first question, but leave the second question blank. The idea is to boycott the options, and “defeat [Gov.] Luis Fortuño’s government,” as the PPD’s president and candidate for governor, Sen. Alejandro Garcia Padilla, said earlier this year.

“The PPD has long defended the status quo against any and all efforts to transition the people of Puerto Rico from an undemocratic, unequal and undignified status to a democratic, equal and dignified status — so their approach to this plebiscite is disheartening but not surprising,” Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner, Pedro Pierluisi, told VOXXI earlier this year.

Many PPD supporters, who are known as Populares, along with other independent voters, are not sure about their best option.

“I was going to vote ‘no’ on the first question and for sovereignty on the second, to send a message to the United States Congress about the need to allow Puerto Ricans to strengthen the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico,” said Aurea Gonzalez*, a professor at the University of Puerto Rico.

“However, I have suffered the oppression that this government has put on the faculty, the community at the university and the community in general,” she said. “[The plebiscite is] a scam to confuse people, making them believe Congress will listen. I’m voting ‘yes,’ now. Through my vote I want to tell them [both in Washington and San Juan] that the people must be respected.”

Leaving part of the ballot blank is just “stupidity,” David Rodriguez, lifelong supporter of the PPD, told VOXXI.

“You don’t leave a ballot blank because that lends itself to voter fraud,” he said. “This trap has been set up by the PNP, and they fell in it. They shouldn’t have asked yes or no, they should have asked what status the people would have preferred.”

“I’m voting ‘no’ because I’m not satisfied,” said Dr. Juan B. Giusti, professor at the University of Puerto Rico’s  Medical Sciences campus and an independent voter.  “I don’t recognize the 1952 decision to create the commonwealth as a final solution for our political status.”

Giusti said that sovereignty is recognized internationally, and it would allow Puerto Rico to play a role in the international stage, because currently the island’s economy is tied to the United States and the island lacks privileges.

Puerto Ricans can serve in the military but cannot vote for president—with the exception of voting in presidential primaries. In addition, although for some exceptions, they pay no federal taxes. They became American citizens in 1917, around the time when the United States declared war on Germany and entered World War I.

In every plebiscite held, the current status has won.

“The United States has intervened in Puerto Rico in many ways, from television to radio, and the people of Puerto Rico have not had a chance to evaluate other possibilities,” Delgado said.

This plebiscite will be held on November 6

barack obama puerto rico plebiscite

Backed by Puerto Rican and American flags, President Barack Obama waves to a crowd gathered inside a hangar at the Muniz Air National Guard Base, shortly after his arrival in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Tuesday, June 14, 2011. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

This plebiscite will be held on the same day of the general election in Puerto Rico, Nov. 6. Many, from U.S. senators, to congressmen to leaders of the opposition in the island, have criticized this move.

“The New Progressive Party and its leadership understand that it is convenient to attract those in favor of statehood, and then since they’re there [in the voting booth] already, they can vote for their party’s candidate as well, [governor] Luis Fortuño.” Fortuño ran for governor in 2008 with the promise of solving the island’s political status.

Delgado said there could be a surprise this year, and the annexationist cause would gain some points in this event.

A poll released by Puerto Rican newspaper El Nuevo Dia backs the professor’s opinion. The poll revealed that the statehood option in the second question is edging out the option for a sovereign free state with a two-point advantage, with 44 percent. However, in the first question, which asks if Puerto Ricans are satisfied with the current status, the “yes” option is winning with 51 percent, against 39 percent that said “no.”

*Name has been changed

email
Share this post

Source: VOXXI News

Get our Weekly Newsletter

  • Soberana

    Contrary to Mr. McClintock, I think this is why we have to vote NO and for the Sovereign ELA

  • http://www.facebook.com/jmedardo José M. Díaz Carazo

    Statehooders have failed to convince and win any of the three plebiscites ever held in Puerto Rico since 1967. The Commonwealth option has always won–1967, 1993 and 1998. However, statehooders have dismissed the mandates of those three plebiscites and insisted in celebrating more plebiscites to see if they can ever win. That is the case for November 2012, with the caveat that they excluded the Commonwealth option because everyone knows that if you are going to swim 200 metres freestlye and you want to win, you have to prevent Michael Phelps from swimming with you. I would like to see statehooders win for the first time ever, so commonwealthers disrespect their victory and dismiss their mandate for the next 44 years. If democracy is not good enough for commonwealthers, it sure as hell’s not good enough for statehooders.

  • Ezequiel Gonzalez

    A permanent political relationship between Puerto Rico and the USA cannot be based on the subordination, thru the territorial clause, of one nation, Puerto Rico, to the other. Neither can it be based on the denial of historical, sociological and spiritual facts. The Nationhood of Puerto Rico is a historical, sociological and even spiritual fact.

    While not yet a Sovereign Nation: Puerto Rico has been a Nation for the last 200 years. Sociologically and spiritually speaking a Nation is a living collective entity with a sense of origin, both historical and mythical, a present identity and a sense of purpose and destiny of its own. Puerto RIco is precisely that, even more so than the Union itself

    Another historical fact is that the framework of Statehood was not design and has never been use to absorb other nations into the Union. When the Union was establish there was an entire Continent to the west of it Territory that was scarcely populated. American were expected to move into this area and form American communities that would eventually seek to integrate themselves into the Union. The framework of statehood was design to accommodate that need.

    Even in the cases of Alaska and Hawaii, the same process was implemented with a slight variation. First the Union bought or took over the territory, then populated it with Americans and then these Americans asked for Statehood. The native population of these territories was mainly opposed to Statehood but by the time the respective plebiscites were held, the Americans among them have become the majority. These territories before being acquired by the Union, were scarcely populated and did not have a Western Style Civilization, Government and sense of nationhood. So it was easier for the Union to dismiss their national identities and governments, colonize and absorb them into the Union.

    The case of Puerto Rico is completely different. By the time the Americans invaded PR, Puerto Rico was already overpopulated, by the standards of that time. The country was well organize under a Western Civilization form of Government, and had a clear cut sense of its own nationality, history, culture and even a sense of its mythical origin destiny and purpose, clearly seen in the Puerto Rican literature of that time. That mythical sense of origin destiny and purpose has remain unmovable ever since. So general Miles did not invaded a country of savages, as his prejudices would have told him, but a Western Democracy, lead by intellectuals, head and shoulders above him. For them, he was the savage, uneducated, brute American invader.

    Very few American intellectuals could claim to be at the level of Eugenio Maria de Hostos, or Betances, or Luis Muñoz RIvera, educated in the best Universities of Europe. The System of Government PR had already negotiated with Spain in 1896 and was in the process of implementing at that time was better, head and shoulders above, the present Commonwealth status that we were able to get from the Americans over 50 years latter. What the heck, that Government was conceptually better than the Federal Statehood model upon which The American Union has been built. The influence of these and previous Puerto RIcan intellectuals in the Spanish Court and Legislative and Political System has been considered fundamental in the Model of Government that was latter on implemented, initially in Spain and latter on in the entire European Region.

    Back to the present. The Statehood model was not design neither did it develop to incorporate other nations into the American Union. IT was meant to integrate communities of loyal Americans who had move to the territories to the west and wanted to formalize their relationship with and integration into the Union. Puerto Rico is not a territory to the West but a Western Civilization Style Democratic Nation to the right. Thus Puerto RIco will not fit into the framework of Federal Statehood and if you, or we, or the Devil himself would try to make it fit, the framework will brake apart, and we all will suffer the consequences.

    • http://twitter.com/shaqattaq32 Nicholas C

      Interesting point. I never thought of it that way before.

  • Tax Payer

    51st State would stop the free ride… and i have land there …. college kids getting mad because they want to take that check away for them to go to school.. how about you pay for school like we do here…. welfare because people don’t want to work … FYI — if work was fun it would be called play, no one likes it… but we do it People need to put their big girl panties on and stop whining and step out the front do and find a job. Stop this we can’t because of it wouldn’t work or the frame work is not there. FYI this County was started from nothing you already have something or some form of something so you are in better condition than we were to start with. I Believe You Can Do It Together, But You Must Believe TOO !!!