San Juan, Puerto Rico – Thousands of people took to the streets of San Juan Thursday to press Puerto Rico’s government and legislators to speed up the agreements needed to end a financial crisis that has left 100,000 public employees temporarily out of work and 500,000 children out of school.
The protest march ended in front of the capitol, the seat of the Puerto Rican legislature.
The demonstrators also demanded that taxes be raised to help bring an end to the crisis.
Gov. Anibal Acevedo, House Speaker Jose Aponte and Senate President Kenneth McClintock reached an agreement in principle Wednesday to end the crisis.
The governor said after meeting with Aponte, McClintock and a committee evaluating the crisis that the agreement would allow the island “to return to normal next Monday.”
Acevedo said, however, that officials still “have to define certain aspects more precisely,” adding that he planned to meet Thursday with the House and Senate leaders to address these points.
Acevedo, Aponte and McClintock agreed to accept the recommendations made by the evaluation committee and authorize the Government Development Bank to lend the government $741 million on the condition that agreement was reached on fiscal and tax reforms.
After 18 months of sharp disagreements between the legislative and executive branches over the budget, the governor said April 23 there was only $1.02 billion remaining in the Treasury, a sum that was only sufficient to pay for essential services like health care and police through the beginning of the fiscal year on July 1.
The battle over the budget pitted the legislature, in which the opposition New Progressive Party (PNP) has an absolute majority, against the governor, who belongs to the Popular Democratic Party.
On May 1, some 100,000 public employees were left out of a job and the commonwealth government was forced to close the island’s public schools.
This was the first time in the history of Puerto Rico that public schools had to shut their doors because of a lack of funds.
The island has 1,534 public schools with more than 500,000 students and 40,000 teachers.
Municipal governments have also been affected by the financial crisis, since they get a large proportion of their operating funds from the central government.
Puerto Rico’s commonwealth government has a payroll of some $500 million. The partial government shutdown has affected the island’s businesses, banks and other private-sector enterprises.
