By The Star Staff
Pro-statehood lawyer Gregorio Igartúa advised Gov. Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia on Sunday against holding a status vote next year and to seek territorial incorporation from Congress instead.
Igartúa, who has a private legal practice, Igartúa Law, in Aguadilla, said the most effective alternative is to push Congress to certify Puerto Rico as an incorporated territory because the declaration would put the U.S. commonwealth on the track to statehood and from that point on the island would not be de-incorporated.
While Igartúa said he supports the statehood movement in any consultation it holds, he said there should not be a status vote.
“We have to act with the reality of what we truly are and not with what we wish to be,” he said.
Several U.S. rulings, such as the Insular Cases, have defined Puerto Rico as an unincorporated territory. The U.S. Department of Interior Office of Insular Affairs defines an unincorporated territory as a U.S. insular area in which Congress has determined that only selected parts of the U.S. Constitution apply. The office defines an incorporated territory as one in which Congress has used the full U.S. Constitution as it applies to states. Incorporation is a perpetual state. Once incorporated, a territory can no longer be de-incorporated.
Besides including Puerto Rico in its definition of a U.S territory, the Office of Insular Affairs also categorizes Puerto Rico as a U.S. commonwealth, defined as an organized United States insular area that has established with the federal government a more highly developed relationship, usually embodied in a written mutual agreement.
Igartúa said that although the courts said otherwise, the reality is that Puerto Rico has already been incorporated as a territory because Puerto Ricans enjoy all the rights and benefits afforded by the U.S. Constitution except for the presidential vote.
“If we ask for [territorial incorporation], they will not be able to deny it to us,” he said.
He also said federal judge Gustavo Gelpí, who was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in October 2021, declared that Puerto Rico was an incorporated territory in the case Consejo de Salud Playa de Ponce vs. Health Secretary Johnny Rullán many years ago, and “this has never been reversed.”
Pierluisi recently said he might enable a status vote next year using a 2020 law that allows him to do so.
Igartúa said such a decision might also backfire, recalling that when former Gov. Luis Fortuño convened a status vote in 2012, he managed to unite the pro-commonwealth opposition Popular Democratic Party and went on to lose the election.
Pierluisi has said he may use the status formulas presented in congressional legislation, which do not include the current commonwealth status.
The congressional legislation has, however, obtained very little congressional support.
Comments