The Government of Puerto Rico will start today the first steps in the direction of annexing the island to the United States with the endorsement of the majority support obtained in the non-binding plebiscite of Sunday, uncertain road on which the United States Has not been pronounced.
The representative of the Government of Puerto Rico to the US Congress, Jenniffer Gonzalez, said today that 97% of voters support the annexation to the United States. Is the best letter of introduction so that in the American capital begins to take seriously that objective of the governing New Progressive Party (PNP).
The opposition, which during the campaign asked its followers to boycott the consultation for not having counted on the Government to agree on the questions, recalled that the participation was only 22.9%, a percentage that in their eyes discredits the plebiscite And any pretension of the Executive led by Ricardo Rosselló to present the results as an endorsement of his objective.
The US Government has not expressed itself officially about the consultation, nor has the United States Congress, whose plenipotentiary powers are subject to this Caribbean territory with little more than 3.5 million inhabitants linked to the American country since 1898 with Motive of the Spanish-American War.
Gonzalez, whose position is that of a resident commissioner, a non-voting representative in the US House of Representatives, asserts that that 97% in favor of annexation is a clear mandate from the people of Puerto Rico for US authorities to agree to begin A path that could lead to the island becoming the 51st state of the United States.
“Over the past week many of my colleagues in Congress have said they would respect and support the will of US citizens living in the Puerto Rico territory, as expressed in the plebiscite,” said the US official.
Gonzalez argued as to the strategy to carry out to achieve the goal of creating an environment in Washington in favor of annexation that will pressure the congressmen, without giving more details.
As for the low turnout, he said that “democracy is one of those who vote”.
On the steps to follow that will begin today to make known in Washington the meaning of the vote of Sunday’s plebiscite, Governor Rosselló said that soon will be named members of an Equality Commission who will be in charge of working before the Congress in Washington to create an environment favorable to annexation.
That plan is included in the law known as the “Tennessee Plan,” which provides for sending a mission to Washington to present the outcome and manage its approval before the US Congress.
Rosselló repeated during the campaign that the consultation was endorsed by the US authorities, which in his view was endorsed by the presence of observers from the United States to continue on the spot the vote.
The opposition refutes to Rosselló that the only endorsement to which the governor refers is the 2.5 million dollars destined as starting for the consultation in the last budget of the Government of Barack Obama (2009-2017) and that was approved by the Congress .
That party, according to opposition parties, would respond to the US need. To justify that it addresses the problem of Puerto Rico’s political status, after a plebiscite on the same subject of 2012 -which was matched with the general lessons- a majority of Puerto Ricans spoke out against the present status of the island.
Héctor Ferrer, president of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), the main opposition party, stresses that the government’s claims are invalid by having abstained – following his advice – eight out of ten of those registered to vote.
The vice president of the most minority Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), María de Lourdes Santiago, said that the plebiscite was useless and that it was found that annexation was defeated.
The consultations on the political relationship of Puerto Rico with respect to the United States were the fifth in history after those of 1967, 1993, 1998 and 2012, which did not serve for the United States to address the issue of the political status of the island.
