Panel May Foretell Change of Status for Puerto Rico

Puerto Ricans could be pushed to choose between statehood and independence by a White House task force named to study the future of the island.

Those options, outlined two years ago by a Bush administration official, conspicuously leave out Puerto Rico’s current commonwealth status, the 51-year-old political relationship that still is championed by the Popular Democratic Party of Gov. Sila M. Calderon and the legislative majority in this Caribbean U.S. territory.

The 16-member panel quietly named this month by President Bush to clarify options for the island’s future political status is co-chaired by Ruben Barrales, White House director of intergovernmental affairs.

Barrales said Bush was intent on settling the status of the island.

“The main thing to understand is the president doesn’t do something like this for political reasons or just because it might sound good,” he said last week. “He’s serious about it and has charged very serious people in his government to take a look at it.”

In 2001, Barrales told a pro-statehood audience here that Bush was committed “to allowing Puerto Ricans to choose their own destiny” between sovereignty and joining the union.

“That’s totally unacceptable,” said Puerto Rico Sen. Roberto Prats Palerm, the Popular Democratic candidate in 2004 to represent the island in Congress as resident commissioner. “That’s not dealing with the issue in good faith.

“There will be nothing more anti-democratic or anti-Hispanic than to rule out a relationship that has half a century of history, and has been supported consistently by the people of Puerto Rico as their choice of government.”

But his opponent for resident commissioner, Luis Fortuno of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, characterized commonwealth as a transitional status unrecognized by the U.S. Constitution.

“The federal government can have a relationship with a state, or with a sovereign nation,” he said. “At the end of the day, you really have two pathways, I believe: either statehood or independence.”

Barrales last week acknowledged his earlier comment, but said it was now “too early to say” whether the task force would include continuing the current status among the option for islanders to choose.

“At this point, we want to be objective and present options that are consistent with the Constitution, and we’re going to do that,” he said. “I think this process will bring to light what those options are.”

The dispute over Puerto Rico’s political relationship with the United States is the central organizing principle to politics in this island of 3.8 million, where each of the major parties defines itself by the status option it supports.

Polls generally show support for commonwealth and statehood running nearly even, with independence finishing a distant third. In the most recent vote, a nonbinding plebiscite in 1998, islanders opted for the status quo over statehood.

Any change in the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States would require the approval of Congress, which has not called a referendum on the issue since approving the commonwealth in 1952.

The task force, established by President Clinton in December 2000, includes representatives of every Cabinet department. The new members Bush names will meet for the first time in January.

“We’ll make recommendations in terms of which options we think are viable,” Barrales said. “In the end, obviously the Puerto Ricans will have to decide on the option they want to choose. We’re hoping to be that neutral forum for discussion of the options and being able to lay it out there so that people can make a decision.”

He said the panel would seek input from Puerto Rico’s political parties, civic leaders, academics and other interested people. He said there was as yet no time frame for final recommendations, and no decision on what Bush would do with them.

“There are different ways in terms of the process that you can get to a particular status,” he said. “Such a process could be something that focuses on just one option and pushing that through, or could be providing a plebiscite or something along those lines.”

The United States took possession of this former Spanish colony after defeating Spain in the Spanish-American War of 1898. Residents were granted U.S. citizenship in 1917.

Under commonwealth status, islanders do not vote for president or pay federal income tax. They are subject to federal law and may be drafted into the U.S. military, but their voice in Washington is limited to the resident commissioner, a nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives.

Response here to the task force has broken down along political lines.

“I believe this is the beginning of that final push,” Fortuno said. “I am very hopeful that this process will finally put to an end more than a century of this discussion.”

But Prats Palerm said resurrection of the task force appeared timed to the 2004 elections on the mainland and the island. He said a panel in Washington was the wrong mechanism to settle the issue.

“You’re going to have people who have no knowledge of Puerto Rico telling Puerto Ricans what is available and what is not,” he said. “That is an invitation to disaster.”