Rafael “Tatito” Hernández proposes to withdraw status projects signed by Wanda Vázquez

Washington DC. – The Popular Democratic Party (PPD) delegation to the House of Representatives has proposed to repeal Laws 167 and 165 of December 30, 2020 that promote the election of six state lobbyists respectively and call for a new plebiscite in the hands of the governor.

“We are going to exhaust the legislative resources before we take them to court (challenge)”said Rafael “Tatito” Hernández Montañez, who will be introduced as Speaker of the House of Representatives on Monday, at the start of the session.

The bill presented this afternoon by representatives of the PPD in the Puerto Rican lower house also aims to repeal the 2017 law that created the Equality Commission.

On the one hand, Law 167 – which would allow for the election of six ‘special delegates’ to Congress on May 16, whose sole function will be to lobby for a state – “blends the prerogatives of a legislature with that of the executive”. , said Hernández Montañez.

In addition, the legislature questioned, among other things, the requirement that the law imposes on these delegates to speak both fluent English and Spanish, which excludes “at least 70% of the population”, and the power granted to the government for a Elected official who does not undertake to promote a state for the island.

Federal law requires the resident commissioner in Washington to be proficient in English, but no officer of the government of Puerto Rico is mandated with that requirement. Law 167 proposes to elect six state lobbyists as special deputies to Congress, four assigned to lobby the lower house and two to the Senate.

Although the measure has been presented today, its consideration must wait until next week when the new session of the Puerto Rico Legislature begins.

Law 165, for its part, remains in the hands of the governor Pedro Pierluisi call a new plebiscite. Pierluisi could define by executive order the status alternatives to be presented in a consultation and choose when to hold them.

Laws 165 and 167 were passed in an extraordinary post-election session and signed by then-Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced on December 30 last year, in response from the New Progressive Party (PNP) to the Creole plebiscite on November 3, in which 52.5% of the votes.

“They knew they had lost control of the Legislative Assembly for the four-year period 2021-2024, turning our system into one that resembles a dictatorship,” indicates the legislation of the PPD in the Lower House.

Hernández Montañez, on the other hand, agreed with the head of the Puerto Rico Bar Association to present that group’s project in favor of a constitutional assembly of status.

Meanwhile, Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) lawmakers, Senator María de Lourdes Santiago and Deputy Dennis Márquez, presented resolutions to establish a special committee tasked with recommending legislation leading to a “Assembly for Decolonization” .

The PPD and PIP status measures would require the green light from Governor Pedro Pierluisi or two-thirds of the support in both houses to bypass a potential veto. Although the PPD has an absolute majority in the House of Representatives, it has a simple majority of 12 of the 27 senators

The representative of the PNP José Aponte has ruled out that his colleagues could support any kind of convocation in favor of a status meeting. “There is a democratic mandate for a state and we are going to enforce that will from our people. This initiative for a status convention is completely out of the question, ”said Aponte, chairman of the House of Representatives.