San Juan- A White House task force on Puerto Rico's ties with the rest of United States heard from islanders across the political spectrum on Wednesday March 3rd at a hearing that sought unsuccessfully to hear support for a process to solve the territorial status of the island without direct involvement by the Federal Government.

U.S. Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli, a task force co-chairman, said "the meeting was meant to gather opinions on what role the U.S. government can play in resolving the status question".

National Committeewoman Zoraida Fonalledas appeared at the hearing, and despite having been denied a formal opportunity to testify, made her case during the public portion of the hearing.  Along with her remarks, the Republican attorney submitted a written statement for the record.

In her statement Mrs. Fonalledas responded to Mr. Perrelli's assertion and made it abundantly clear that it is the constitutional, legal and moral responsibility of the Federal Government to address the issue of Puerto Rico's colonial status.

"Decades of federal governing measures reflecting ambivalence in Congressional intentions as to status resolution have institutionalized the contradictions and confusion in federal law and policy applicable to Puerto Rico. In turn, this ambiguity in federal doctrine has been mirrored in locally concocted status doctrines that exploit the long-term confusion for short-term political gain," stated the Republican Leader.

She forcefully added that "Congress and the Executive Branch must actively and affirmatively provide for self determination that meets the democratic standards America has set for the rest of the world and in its own domestic and international practices, with respect to decolonization of dependent territories in the modern era, The U.S. has been a leader among nations on self determination for dependent foreign client states and neo-colonial possessions."

Mrs. Fonalledas concluded in supporting congressional legislation awaiting for a floor vote in the House of Representatives: "H.R. 2499 is the correct means for Congress to restore the principle of government by consent of the governed. It also will restore federal territorial law and policy to a democratic standard consistent with both modern precepts of self-determination and the anti-colonial principles of the Northwest Ordinance."

 (SEE BELOW FOR THE FULL TEXT OF THE STATEMENT BY ZORAIDA FONALLEDAS)

REPUBLICAN PARTY OF PUERTO RICO

Statement of Zoraida Fonalledas

Republican National Committeewoman from Puerto Rico

The President’s Task Force on Puerto Rico’s Status

San Juan, Puerto Rico

March 3, 2010

Introduction

This statement is submitted not merely in my capacity as a statehood supporter, a national party official, or an attorney. I appear today also as a Puerto Rican woman and a mother, proud of my heritage and that of our people, which is rooted deeply in the fertile ground of the Puerto Rican experience. I also petition as a U.S. citizen who believes Puerto Rico’s heritage has been sustained and enriched by our American experience, during more than a century of progress and expanding horizons for our island and her people.

Politically, my first allegiance is to the Constitution of the United States, but it is also for my children and grandchildren that I serve the cause of self-determination and status resolution for our homeland. The fate of Puerto Rico implicates the most fundamental principles defining the American idea of liberty, equality and government by consent.

If America cannot redeem the central principles of democracy in Puerto Rico, it will mean one century of progress will be followed by decades of failed government under the American flag. Thus, mine is the voice of an American in Puerto Rico who does not want my generation’s failure to resolve the question of Puerto Rico’s status to be our legacy to the next generation.

Status resolution is the paramount issue for the people of Puerto Rico, and for the U.S. in its governance of Puerto Rico. That is why there is a federal task force on the subject of Puerto Rico’s status in the White House, whose mission is to make possible democratic reforms leading to a fully self-governing status.

Accordingly, this visit to Puerto Rico by the Task Force appointed by President Obama is very welcome, just as we welcomed establishment of the Task Force by President Clinton, and the bipartisan approach taken by the first Task Force appointed in the Bush Administration. In that context, it is hard to overstate the significance of the heavy reliance of the Task Force reports completed during the Bush Administration on authoritative instruments of policy and law promulgated by the White House and the Department of Justice during the Clinton Administration.

This evolving bipartisan Executive Branch policy initiative underscores not only continuity on fundamental issues of law and policy between a succession of presidential administrations, it reminds us that Puerto Rico status is not really part of the national political debate over more controversial and polarizing issues. Thus, while Puerto Ricans are part of a larger Hispanic population in America, linking our call for self-determination and equal status to the politics of immigration reform often strikes us as racial rhetoric based on ignorance.

I am a proud and loyal Republican, and I bear great affection for my fellow Americans in the GOP, just as I admire and respect many close and steadfast friends who are members of the Democratic Party. But I grow weary at times explaining that Puerto Ricans are not immigrants, we are already Americans.

Because Puerto Ricans have been Americans for over 90 years, in stepping up to seize our right of self-determination we really are not asking our conservative or liberal friends to do us any special favors. We just want them to do what is right for America in its sovereign constitutional governance of the last large and heavily populated U.S. territory.

Yet, somehow many in Washington seem to think ending permanent disenfranchisement and denial of equality for a population of Americans larger than that in half the states of the union is not so much a duty as an option, sort of like granting amnesty to illegal immigrants. The misconception is that equal protection of law for 4 million Americans in Puerto Rico does not give rise to any compelling legal or constitutional issues, but is merely a policy question over which federal government has unfettered discretion.

That makes it necessary for us to explain, often more than once, that we do not petition to receive an amnesty for which we have no need, we aspire to equal civil rights and full democratic representation in our national government. We are not coming to Washington with a tin cup in hand to plead for federal subsidization, we seek political and economic empowerment through statehood, so that Puerto Rico an pay its way in the union, for the first time in more than a century of American policies integrating the territory into the national political and economic system.

What we really seek is inclusion in the more perfect union instituted by the founders, and sanctified by the blood soaked up in the hallowed ground of battlefields where contested concepts of liberty and equality tragically but also gloriously were refined to make the union more perfect today than it was at he inception of the republic. We honor that sacrifice by seeking the full measure of the blessings others of all races and creeds died to secure for all U.S. citizens.

That is why we choose statehood over territorial commonwealth or separate sovereign nationhood. Commonwealth is not democratic government by the people, it is a federally instituted regime of limited local territorial self-government to which the local population consented to as an improvement over the previous even less democratic form of local government.

Because federal law necessarily remains supreme and supersedes local law in all matters whatsoever, and only citizens of states are politically empowered by individual rights under the American system of federalism, we do not believe territorial commonwealth is or ever can become a satisfactory substitute or experimental status in lieu of statehood. No alternative form of union could ever improve upon the more prefect union of statehood.

Thus, simply stated, no matter how it may be perceived in the short term, in reality all other federal and local political, legal, fiscal, commercial, economic, social, cultural, and government policy matters ultimately have less long term importance than status resolution.

Even if it takes years for the self-determination process to reach culmination, it is imperative now that there be a federally sponsored self-determination mechanism that makes orderly democratic status resolution possible.

The Promise of the Obama Administration

While the transition period for achieving a democratic status may be prolonged, real progress toward a known permanent status will end state of political limbo we have been in for a hundred years. Certainty will usher in a political, social and economic resurgence for Puerto Rico.

This view is consistent with the position adopted by President Obama during the 2008 campaign, after he had been barraged by the most persuasive arguments of the most impassioned advocates on all sides of the status debate.

Upon hearing from statehooders, commonwealth supporters, and the independence faction, he spoke plainly and yet resoundingly, saying on May 25, 2008, that Puerto Rico is “. . .definitely a territory,’ but one that is “.. trying to figure out” if it wants to remain a territory.

Then our President said, “And that’s why it’s so important for us to really pay attention to providing a mechanism for that final status to be determined m committed to doing that... in my first term... setting up a procedure whereby the people of Puerto Rico can make this final decision.”

For all Americans, regardless of political affiliation, the transcendental meaning of the election of President Obama in 2008 was that we as a nation, as a people, do not have to live forever with the mistakes of the past. We are not captives of the wrongs and injustices of the past. Our hope for change is not futile, unless we acquiesce in the denial of our rights.

We uphold the same hope for Puerto Rico with respect to the mistakes, wrongs and injustice of our political status. Yet, we are mindful that:

• It was a mistake for Congress to confer U.S. citizenship in 1917, without explicitly committing to full and equal citizenship through incorporation, extension of the federal constitution by its own force, and eventual statehood.

• It was wrong for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in the 1922 Balzac case that Congress could govern the U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico outside the protection of the federal constitution, in the same manner as non-citizen subjects in the Philippine islands territory were governed under the unincorporated territory doctrine invented by the court’s 1901 ruling in the Downes case.

• It was an injustice for Congress to misconstrue the Balzac decision as license to govern the U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico under discriminatory statutory policies that define a subclass of citizenship with less than equal legal standing, and to do so for an indefinite period without sponsoring a self- determination process to ensure that the principles of self-determination and government by consent were being respected in governance of the territory.

Why Congress Must Act?

HR. 2499 is the most recent of a series of bills to authorize a federally recognized status resolution process to be considered by Congress over the last two decades, including two bills passed in the House of Representatives during that period. HR. 2499 represents the best effort of Congress to accommodate all parties and listen to all voices, and then provide for as fair and neutral a self-determination process as possible.

Based on the patient and careful deliberations of Congress over two decades, characterized general by a bipartisanship reflected in the current sponsorship of H.R. 2499, this bill separates the legal and political facts from the ideological doctrines of the local political parties in Puerto Rico.

Decades of confusion caused by flawed federal court rulings on Puerto Rico’s status are over. The once seemingly plausible idea that Puerto Rico can be a nation but remain under U.S. sovereignty, or become sovereign and keep U.S. citizenship without true allegiance, has been discredited and rejected by the federal courts, Congress and the Executive Branch.

Similarly, the notion that real self-determination on real options should be held in abeyance, while the elites of the territorial commonwealth seek to redefine U.S. federalism and create a new form of “associated statehood,” has been repudiated.

Congress can do pretty much as it pleases to change the terms under which territorial commonwealth continues, but it is well understood at this point in history that the “improved commonwealth” proposals of the local commonwealth party are simply repackaged bids for perpetual federal subsidization of the status quo.

The local commonwealth party no longer can defend its platform claiming that commonwealth is a legally binding ‘free associated state” status. While real treaty based free association between two separate sovereign nations is recognized under U.S. and international law, the status of Puerto Rico under commonwealth, improved or not, is not and never will be recognized under U.S. or international law as a free associated state status.

That would require separate sovereignty, it cannot be done within the domestic political status framework of the U.S. Constitution, without an amendment to create something other than a state or territory.

H.R. 2499 Withstands the Strictest Scrutiny

HR. 2499 is sponsored by a large bipartisan coalition - 123 Democrats and 58 Republicans — who have seen through the smokescreen of commonwealth party allegations that the bills Congress has developed are unfair and stack the deck against commonwealth.

For example, the commonwealth party presses the accusation that H.R. 2499 somehow disenfranchises commonwealth supporters. Yet, the ballot in the first referendum under H.R. 2499 is structured to fairly give every voter who support s commonwealth the option to preserve commonwealth. If a majority vote to preserve commonwealth, the commonwealth party would then be free to seek form Congress the improvements it has been proposing for 60 years.

The commonwealth party was able to convince a majority to vote for “None of the Above” in a locally conducted status vote in 1998, why are they convinced commonwealth supporters will not vote to preserve commonwealth in the first vote under H.R. 2499? Has the commonwealth party lost confidence in the voters, perhaps because the voters have more knowledge of the real choices this time?

Similarly, upon closer analysis the idea that a two-part ballot is unfair because it allows statehood and independence voters to combine to vote for change is simply anti-democratic. In America we call that majority rule. Those who want commonwealth do not have a right to prevent those who want change from voting based on their freely conceived aspirations for a new status.

Self-determination is a right of individuals, not political parties. The right to self- determination cannot be divvied up or allocated based on ideological pedigree, much less how someone from one party think voters from other parties will vote.

It is anti-democratic arrogance for commonwealth party leaders to demand that statehood and independence voters be denied the right democratically to express their common aspirations for a fully democratic status, even if the new and more democratic status they seek is not the same.

Who appointed the commonwealth party to be the self-determination police? Why are we even listening to these intellectually empty arguments? Who told them they had a preemptive right to a guaranteed first or even second place finish?

The commonwealth party claim that H.R. 2499 is rigged against commonwealth is actually a clever but barely concealed demand for a process that prevents majority rule on whether to seek a new status, and gives commonwealth a manufactured plurality that preserves the status quo.

In a robust democracy, all ideas are equal coming out of the gate, but some ideas cross the finish line last. Having post position when the competition of ideas starts does not ensure an idea or proposal will win, place or even show.

H.R. 2499 is an affirmative federal measure to make resolution of Puerto Rico’s status possible in a manner that also conforms to U.S. practices respecting status resolution for its own former possessions, including the Philippines, Alaska, Hawaii, the Canal Zone and the U.S. administered U.N. Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.

In this regard, the argument by commonwealth leaders against the two tiered balloting process contemplated by H.R. 2499 is utterly without merit. Precisely such tiered multi-option ballots and voting have been employed in U.N. observed self- determination procedures to resolve complicated territorial status issues. A first ballot on the choice between the status quo and change, to be followed by identified terms or options if a majority want change, is not without precedent.

In fact, a tiered options balloting process comparable to that anticipated under H.R. 2499 was employed by the U.S. with U.N. oversight in the difficult but ultimately successful process for approval of free association between the U.S. and the sovereign Republic of Palau. The U.S. Congress confirmed the legitimacy of the balloting process implemented for the voters in Palau, and in 1986 ratified the compact of free association with that former U.S. administered U.N. trust territory in 1985.

Multi-stage periodic votes were also enacted by Congress in the status resolution process for the territories that became the states of North Dakota, South Dakota and Washington.

In the light of historical truth about territorial status resolution, the “improved commonwealth” autonomy proposal can be seen for what it really is - nothing more than an anachronistic and futile attempt to restore archaic features of autonomy granted under Spanish colonial rule. The idealized Spanish autonomy charter was non-binding and colonial, and the same is true of the current commonwealth party platform for “improved commonwealth.”

Commonwealth is territorial, always has been and always will be, unless it is transformed into statehood, independence or real sovereign free association. Thus, the arguments being made against H.R. 2499 are nonsense, and only seem compelling to those who do not understand the record that has been created before Congress over the last two decades.

Protecting the Rights of Citizenship

Continued inaction to restore democratic consent principles cannot be justified. In fact, failure to act may very well be prejudicial to the aspirations of the next generation to preserve their rights and even their status as American citizens. We have a duty to end the status dilemma and free our children to realize their own dreams as individuals and as a people.

For a long as Puerto Rico remains a commonwealth with the status of a territory ruled under the territorial clause power of Congress, the only source of the current U.S. citizenship for our children born in Puerto Rico is federal statutory law. This statutory citizenship enacted pursuant to the sovereign federal territorial power and the treaty of cession from Spain gives us a less than equal legal and political status.

Only application of the 14th Amendment to Puerto Rico by its own force will secure for our descendants in perpetuity an automatic constitutionally defined U.S. citizenship right, conferral of which is beyond the reach of Congress.

Those politicians and party ideologues who urge delay, gradualism and experimentation to “improve” commonwealth do not seem to realize that the 14 Amendment was adopted to end the power of Congress to define citizenship by statute. Today, only those who do not acquire full constitutionally conferred U.S. citizenship under the 14 amendment still acquire it only by discretionary Congressional application of naturalization statutes that are subject to amendment and repeal.

As never before we know that the world order changes, the national agenda changes, and the day may come when a decision is made by Congress to stop conferral of territorial American citizenship that only creates a new and expanding disenfranchised class of U.S. citizens in the territories. Those who are telling us to wait until the local economy improves to make a decision about status cannot guaranty that our grandchildren will acquire even the limited territorial classification of U.S. citizenship conferred on our generation.

Real Choices

I challenge the defenders of commonwealth to justify delay and gradualism, instead of federal sponsorship of a self-determination process based on real options, when our people are not sovereign in our homeland after nearly a century of U.S. nationality. Statehood, independence and real free association based on separate national sovereignty are the only options that reconcile our human rights with our status as citizens subject to the sovereign power of the U.S. to govern our lands and our people.

Since federal law is supreme in Puerto Rico, and any status solution must be mutually agreed and approved by Congress, self-determination informed by governing law and status resolution itself is legally impossible without federal facilitation. Thus, to oppose a federally sponsored status resolution process is to oppose status resolution for Puerto Rico.

Decades of federal governing measures reflecting ambivalence in Congressional intentions as to status resolution have institutionalized the contradictions and confusion in federal law and policy applicable to Puerto Rico. In turn, this ambiguity in federal doctrine has been mirrored in locally concocted status doctrines that exploit the long-term confusion for short-term political gain

The inconclusive results of all locally conducted status votes reflect the confusing and fallacies of non-normative status doctrines promoted by local political party leaders in the absence sound and unequivocal federal policy.

Congress and the Executive Branch must actively and affirmatively provide for self determination that meets the democratic standards America has set for the rest of the world and in its own domestic and international practices, with respect to decolonization of dependent territories in the modern era, The U.S. has been a leader among nations on self determination for dependent foreign client states and neo-colonial possessions.

H.R. 2499 is the correct means for Congress to restore the principle of government by consent of the governed. It also will restore federal territorial law and policy to a democratic standard consistent with both modern precepts of self-determination and the anti-colonial principles of the Northwest Ordinance.