The Puerto Rico Democratic Self Determination Act, HR9246, has a handful of Democratic supporters and some Democratic detractors, while no Republicans have sponsored or reacted publicly to the bill in any way. Democratic and Republican parties, however, are not the major political parties in Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, the two major parties have historically been the party supporting statehood and the party supporting an “enhanced commonwealth.” There is also a small independence party and new political parties in Puerto Rico which say that they are not aligned with any status option: the Citizen’s Victory Movement and the Dignity Project. The Citizen’s Victory Movement made a deal with the Independence Party in 2024, asking their constituents to vote for each other’s candidates.
How did the territory’s political leaders react to the newly introduced Democratic Self Determination Act?
Independence Party
The secretary general of the Independence Party, Juan Dalmau, did not mince words. He called the bill a “grotesque joke in bad taste” and “a poster child for colonialism.”
El Vocero quotes Dalmau as saying, “The fact that [Resident Commissioner Pablo José Hernández] announced the filing of this bill with colonial status as an option today, ten years after the PROMESA Act was passed under that political status which allowed them to unilaterally impose a Fiscal Control Board with more power than the constitutional branches of government, is an insult to the people of Puerto Rico.”
This reaction is in keeping with the traditional response of the Independence Party to any legislation that supports the current colonial relationship.
Popular Democratic Party (PDP)
This is the party of the Resident Commissioner who introduced HR9246. On his website, Rep. Hernández quotes members of his party in the Puerto Rico House and Senate, Héctor Ferrer and Luis Javier Hernández, who said, “It is a measure that respects democracy and the will of all Puerto Ricans.”
The PDP has fought for years to keep “commonwealth” on the ballot.
Statehood Party
Governor Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon is a statehood supporter and member of the statehood party. She has not publicly spoken about the new status bill, although she is presumably opposed.
The Puerto Rico Statehood Council published a press release on the subject calling the bill “a non-binding exercise in wishful thinking.”
Since both status votes and polls consistently show that the majority of Puerto Rico voters favor statehood, it is likely that any additional status votes will continue to favor statehood. Objections to HR9246 focus on two points: first, that the bill supports the current colonial status; and second, that rather than resolving Puerto Rico’s status, it is designed to delay progress toward a permanent political status.
At the very least, by including a controversial “commonwealth” option in the proposal, the new Puerto Rico status bill continues the tradition of confusion and controversy over the term “commonwealth.”
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