Puerto Rico's Election Turn, An Insulting Spectacle: by Cuba's Vice-President Ricardo Alarcon

[Better Believe It]

May 27, 2008
An Insulting Spectacle
Puerto Rico's Turn
By RICARDO ALARCÓN de QUESADA
Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada is Cuba's Vice President and President of its National Assembly.

On June 1, primary elections will be held in Puerto Rico. For that reason, politicians and journalists will travel to the island to pay to it an attention they never paid before and to turn their visit into part of the spectacle of marketing of politics that in the United States is called "democracy." In this case, however, the spectacle becomes insulting.

The Democratic candidates will compete there for the favor of voters who are not part of U.S. society and therefore have no vote in the U.S. general elections next November. In theory, Puerto Ricans can decide who the Democratic candidate will be but cannot vote for him, or her, or the Republican rival, or any other candidate to the presidency of the United States.

Once the farce is concluded, politicians and journalists will pack their bags and go away, not to deal again with Puerto Rico for the next four years. Once again, they'll try to ignore the interests and aspirations of its noble and generous people.

This time, however, it won't be so easy. The following week, on June 9, the United Nations' Committee on Decolonization will again discuss Puerto Rico's status, as it has done every year since 1972. Many voices have been raised there, and in other U.N. entities, to demand that the United States put an end to its colonial regime and return to the Puerto Rican people the right to decide their fate, a right that was wrested from them more than a century ago.

Latin America is living through a new era, and Puerto Rico is not absent from it. Its turn, Puerto Rico's turn, is very near. It is coming much faster than some people in the North, drunk with demagoguery and ignorance, think.

Please read the entire article at:

http://www.counterpunch.org/alarcon05272008.html

[Pab Sungenis]

1. I hate to say it, but he's right.

Simple plebiscite unlike the previous couple. Up or down. Statehood or independence. No more second class territories.