What type of government does puerto rico function under?

Question

What type of government does puerto rico function under?

Answer 1

democratic party

PPD (partido popular democratico)

status: common wealth

Answer 2

It is a colony of the United States.  Puertorricans are allowed to elect their local government, governor, mayors, local senators and house representatives.  Municipalities have their own legislature, kind of a city council, but without the power that city councils have in U.S. cities.  Judges are nominated by the governor and the Puertorrican Senate evaluates them and confirm them or deny their confirmation, depending on the political stripes of the nominated judge and the sitting legislature.  Right now there are three vacancies to the Puertorrican Supreme Court, but since the governor and the legislature are from different parties, nobody is going to be confirmed after the general election on Nov. 4.  There is a lone representative to Congress, called a Resident Commisioner, that cannot vote on legislation, he can propose legislation, but cannot vote on it, so his power is minimal, since he does not has a vote to trade with anybody in Congress.  No Senators on the U.S. Senate.  The Head of State of Puerto Rico is the President of the United States, since Puerto Rico is not a state, as I said is a colony, as a matter of fact it is one of the oldest colonies in the world (since 1493 to 1898 it was a colony of Spain, from 1898 to today, colony of the U. S.).  The local government has a lot of freedom on local matters, except when they conflict with federal law, which is supreme in the colony of Puerto Rico.  That will be fine if Puertorricans have had a say on the approval of those laws, by having representatives on both Houses of Congress and the right to vote for the President of the United States, but since they  have neither, it is a pretty lousy arrangement.  Supposedly in 1952, the "status question" was resolved by the approval of the "Estado Libre Asociado", literally translated as the Free Associated State, but refered in English as the "Commonwealth".  It is a misnomer, Puerto Rico is not free, nor associated and definitely not a state of the Union.  It is window dressing to make the colony more palatable to the people living in Puerto Rico and to the International Community.  Puerto Rico cannot enter into treaties with other countries, since the U. S. is responsible for foreign policy and thus as a colony it does not have that right.  There is the illusion that Puerto Rico has a high degree of freedom, since it can participate in Olympic Games and send contestants to Miss Universe, but it is all an illusion, to keep the population happy.  In short, the government seems to be democratic, but in reality when you cannot decide whom the President of the United States and have full representation on Congress to participate fully on issues that will affect you, that is not democracy.  Puerto Rico is a colony, plain and simple.

Answer 3

We are what the US calls a "commonwealth". We follow some US rules and regs but we have our own set of rules and regs.  We pretty much have our own governor but fall under the presidency of the US.

Answer 4

Under the U.S. Government, of course.  

But people there call it "commonwealth", sounds better.

Answer 5

Estado Libre Asociado. We are a Commonwealth of the United States of America.

Answer 6

Democratic goverment.

Goverment has three branches: Executive (lead by Governor), Legislative (Senate & House of Representatives), Judicial (Supreme Court, Appeals Court, and other lower levels courts)

Elected officials are chosen by direct vote of the people every four years on the second Sunday of November election (next is this year) :

Governor, Resident Commissioner (at US congress / House, limited voting rights), Senators, House Representatives, Mayors, Municipal (towns) legislators

Other officials of theExecutive branch are nominated by the governor and confirmed by the Senate.  Judges also are nominated / confirmed.  Judges of the Supreme Court can serve until 70 years old.

We have 4 polithical parties, two of them have like 45% of the votes behind them and have the mayority of the elected officials.  A third one only manage to have a Senator, a House Representative, and few Municipal Legislators elected.  The fourth one will participate in the general elections this year for their first time (not sure if they will be able to win a seat anywhere).

We also are an organized and un-incorpored territory of the USA so US Fedral District Courts and federal agencies (FBI, SS, FDA, others) have presence and authority here.

Edit: Parties (PNP, PPD, PIP, PPR) and goverment are two different things.