Groups Plan to Derail Puerto Rico Oversight Board Meeting

Groups opposed to the Puerto Rico Oversight Board plan to try to prevent its first meeting on Friday in New York City.

The meeting is scheduled at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, 1 Bowling Green, from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m.

The Comité Boricua en la Diaspora and several other sympathetic groups plan to demonstrate in front of the meeting place. "The people will not let this meeting happen," the Comité said on its Facebook page Thursday afternoon.

"The United States Congress has imposed the Puerto Rico Oversight Management and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) on the Puerto Rican people, which only seeks to pay the millionaire vulture bond holders from Wall Street," the Facebook site says. "Meanwhile, the people suffer through severe austerity measures."

On Aug. 31 demonstrators in Puerto Rico managed to disrupt a conference in San Juan, P.R., on the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stabilization Act. Though the conference’s sessions were held, most of the attendees were blocked from entering by demonstrators who had surrounded the conference hotel.

Protesters vandalized police vans and rocks were thrown.

In addition there have been extensive demonstrations in front of the federal courthouse in San Juan against the federal imposition of an oversight board.

The groups opposed to the oversight board plan to firm up their demonstration plans Wednesday night, a spokesperson for one of the groups said.

The oversight board is supposed to meet in a basement conference room in the building. Entrance to the courthouse ordinarily includes passing through a metal detector and presenting photographic identification. The meeting is open to the public.

Among the things on the board's agenda is to elect its chairperson, adopt its bylaws, start a search process for a board executive director, and request a fiscal plan from the Puerto Rico government.

Board members met with federal authorities and other interested parties in Washington, D.C. from Sept. 12 to Sept. 16, according to the El Nuevo Día news web site.

On Sept. 23 Puerto Rico's government sent out a statement saying: "Governor [Alejandro] García Padilla is eager for the Oversight Board to meet so that Puerto Rico's comprehensive debt restructuring process can move forward. The administration looks forward to working with the board in preparing a fiscal plan that sets the foundation of Puerto Rico's economic recovery."

President Obama named the members of the board in late August. The seven members and the non-voting representative of Puerto Rico, Richard Ravitch, are expected to attend Friday's meeting.

The board plans to meet again in mid-October, and then in Puerto Rico in mid-November.

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