Says he is ‘fully satisfied’ with his performance over the past 4 years
By The Star Staff
Gov. Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia said Thursday in regard to the appointments he sent to the island Senate for consideration in an extraordinary session: “We will see, that is, we have to wait to see what appointments are evaluated.”
“They are all people who have the credentials. When we are talking about judges, they have already gone through the rigorous judicial evaluation, their performance is free of accusation.” the governor said in response to questions from the press. “In the case of the few new appointments, well, they are people again that in the great majority also went through the evaluation process; there is an evaluation committee that interviews and reviews the credentials of candidates for the judiciary, [and] the great majority went through that process. So what I do feel is that I have appointed people who have the necessary credentials to receive that advice and consent, but I respect the role of the Senate. It will be the Senate that has the last word in that matter.”
Regarding the decision of Speaker of the House of Representatives Rafael “Tatito” Hernández Montañez to close the special session in the lower chamber due to the lack of votes from the New Progressive Party (NPP) delegation to address the measures, Pierluisi said “I am not going to talk about treason or anything like that.”
“We have a republican system of government, [...] there is the Legislative Assembly, there is the executive branch,” he said. “The delegation, the caucus of the NPP delegation did decide to abstain, but the caucus of the NPP delegation is not the majority in the House. So it was really the speaker of the House who apparently had the feeling that he was not going to have the majority necessary to approve those bills. I am not going to judge others, I really did my duty.”
Pierluisi went on to express satisfaction with his management during his term as governor.
“If you had me evaluate the entire four-year term, we would be talking for a long time, but I have to say and I am going to say it here: I feel fully satisfied with my performance as governor, with the performance of my administration,” he said. “We had four years of stability and credibility in the government, we had four years of continuous growth in our economy, we have the lowest unemployment in our history, we have 120,000 more jobs in our economy, we increased the salary of more than 70 percent of public servants with the approval of the [Financial Oversight and Management] Board. Three increases to the minimum wage. The data I give are irrefutable. And in this four-year period we had the lowest number of murders since the ’90s in the last century. All of these data are irrefutable, which is why I am very satisfied with the performance of my administration.”
“Having said that, I respect democracy; politics is what it is,” the governor added. “That [New Progressive Party] primary happened that prevented me from running for reelection and achieving reelection. Now we all have to wish success to the next administration, because the success of the elected governor and her team will be the success of Puerto Rico.”
Comments