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ORLANDO SENTINEL
Storm Damage Won't Halt Vote on Statehood
BY Lance Oliver, Sentinel Correspondent
October 12, 1998
©Copyright 1998 Orlando Sentinel
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Gov. Pedro Rossello demonstrated his firm grip
on power within the pro- statehood New Progressive Party again last week
by persuading the party's governing board to vote unanimously in favor of
holding the status plebiscite Dec. 13 as originally planned.
Despite pleas from the pro-commonwealth party and some local officials,
the governor said the destruction left by Hurricane Georges was no reason
to postpone or cancel the vote on Puerto Rico 's political future.
After a two-hour meeting, the board agreed with Rossello.
The party still is divided, however. Guaynabo Mayor Hector O'Neill, president
of the party's association of mayors, called the board's vote a "bad
decision."
Senate President Charlie Rodriguez, who had suggested postponing the
vote, was conspicuously absent from the news conference after the party
caucus.
A day after the vote, the mayors association voted to go ahead with the
plebiscite campaign, but O'Neill and others were absent. And the mayors
who attended said they will not ask their constituents for donations for
the campaign.
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