Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2010
The 2009 bill (H.R. 2499), was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on May 19, 2009 by Pedro Pierluisi (D-Puerto Rico) who is the Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico to the United States Congress (not a voting-member of the House of Representatives). The bill would provide for a referendum giving Puerto Ricans the choice between the options of retaining their present political status, or choosing a new status. If the former option were to win, the referendum would have been held again every 8 years. If the latter option were to win, a separate referendum would be held where Puerto Ricans would have been given the option of being admitted as a US State "on equal footing with the other states," or becoming a "sovereign nation, either fully independent from or in free association with the United States." The bill enjoyed bi-partisan support in the House of Representatives, with 182 co-sponsors.
Read more about this topic: Puerto Rico Democracy Act
Famous quotes containing the words democracy and/or act:
“No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence the recognition of the rights of minorities.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“I wish my countrymen to consider that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-stock of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)