Ferré welcomes the freedom of the political prisoners
By Luis Penchi

Información enviada al Director de Tlahui. Puerto Rico, Wednesday, December 9, 1998, El Nuevo Día. Ponce (EFE).- Former governor Luis A. Ferré today supported the release of the 15 Puerto Rican independentists confined in U.S. prisons, and said he felt hopeful that president Bill Clinton would soon pardon them.

The affirmation of Ferré, founding president of the New Progressive Party (PNP), differs with his colleague and ex-governor and ex-president of the collective, the current resident commissioner Carlos Romero Barceló, and with the current incumbent Pedro Rosselló.

Rosselló and Romero Barceló think that the imprisoned Puerto Ricans must first repent and commit themselves not to return to criminal activity before they would consider them for executive clemency.

"I think that this cause is moving forward and there is an impression in the White House that this is going to take place," said Ferré in an interview in Ponce. He judged that the freedom of the self-proclaimed "political prisoners" will be good for the status process of the island.

"I advocate because everyone who isn't subject to new criminal charges is pardoned," he said, referring to the defenders of independence for Puerto Rico.

Ferré declined to enter into an analysis as to whether the prisoners have been detained in prison longer than others convicted of criminal charges.

"That is an issue of appreciation in which I am not going to enter because I am neither the governor nor the president."

The veteran pro-statehood fighter judged that the unconditional freedom of the independentists poses no risk whatsoever to Puerto Rican society.

"After what has happened, there is no risk for Puerto Rico. This is a country which is very mature and is on the path toward permanence with the United States," he declared.

Ferré also diminished the significance of the clandestine group, Popular Boricua Army (EPB) "The Machete Wielders," which called for a boycott of Sunday's plebiscite process.

"The only Latin American country that has never had a civil war is Puerto Rico, where our hymn is one of peace, as opposed to that of other countries which speak of war," declared Ferré.

He confessed to having a "close friendship" with the president of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), senator Rubén Berríos Martínez, and with the socialist leader Juan Mari Brás.

"All my life I have been good friends with these two, although we think differently, such that this thing about civil war at these heights is ridiculous," he said.

He maintained that "The Machete Wielders have no effect on the island," because they are a group of a "minuscule number of people who are wrong and who are trying to impose by force and fear a status that the people do not support."

The self-proclaimed leader of the Machete Wielders, the fugitive Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, warned that governor Pedro Rosselló is taking the country into a civil war and maintained that the entity could respond with violence to "the institutional violence of the state."

From: National Committee to Free Puerto Rican Prisoners prpowpp@aol.com
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