Resident commissioner candidate Rivera Lassén remains eligible
By The Star Staff
The Puerto Rico Supreme Court on Monday disqualified four candidates from the Citizen Victory Movement (MVC by its initials in Spanish), preventing them from running in the November elections.
The top court disqualified Mariana Nogales Molinelli and Gladys Myrna Conty as at-large House candidates, and Rafael Bernabe Riefkohl and Alejandro Santiago Calderón as at-large Senate candidates.
In a divided opinion, the island’s highest judicial forum determined to allow the MVC candidate for resident commissioner, Ana Irma Rivera Lassén, to remain as an eligible candidate in the election.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Maité D. Oronoz Rodríguez, Associate Justices Luis F. Estrella Martínez and Ángel Colón Pérez wrote dissenting opinions.
The disqualified candidates can only run as write-in candidates.
A group of candidates for legislative positions from the Popular Democratic Party filed a lawsuit in February in the San Juan Court of First Instance against more than a dozen candidates from the MVC and Dignity Project.
The plaintiffs, who include District 22 Rep. Jorge Alfredo Rivera Segarra and Guayama District Sen. Héctor Torres Santiago, argued that the MVC candidates failed to comply with the endorsement collection requirements established by the 2020 Electoral Code.
The Court of First Instance agreed, but the island appeals court overturned the ruling.
The Supreme Court did not issue a ruling on the Dignity Project candidates because the Appeals Court said they lacked standing.
The decision of the PR Supreme Court definitely reflects the lack of integrity and commitment to the law displayed by several justices of the US Supreme Court. Unfortunately for those justices that opted to side with the PDP/NPP machinery, their credibility and reputation on the bench is what they decided to jeopardize by supporting a highly divided, thus, contested. Situations like this one, expose the disintegration of the Puerto Rican society as we know it, when we question the reliability of the country's supreme court, we know that the rights of the citizenship are being trample.
Fortunately, for PR, house candidates Mariana Nogales Molinelli and Gladys Myrna Conty and, Senate candidates Rafael Bernabe Riefkohl and Alejandro Santiago Calderón should present…