Finance
Who is Wanda Vázquez, who was sworn in as governor of Puerto Rico?
Puerto Rico has had three governors in less than a week.
Ricardo Rosselló, the embattled sitting governor of Puerto Rico, officially resigned from office on August 2, after weeks of massive protests around the island.
After facing heat from protesters as well, his named successor, Secretary of Justice Wanda Vázquez, also announced via Twitter that she had no intention to assume the position.
Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives named Pedro Pierluisi as secretary of state and next-in-line to assume the position of governor. However, the island’s Supreme Court deemed it unconstitutional, and Vázquez was sworn into the governorship Wednesday, The Washington Post reported.
Massive protests, which began after the leak of Rosselló’s misogynistic and homophobic text messages, resumed the day after he announced he was stepping down from office. But this time, they were aimed at Vázquez. In tandem with the trending hashtag #RickyRenuncia as protests took place, calls for Vázquez’s resignation began trending on Twitter under the hashtag #WandaRenuncia.
“I was here until about 2 a.m., and when they said through the megaphone that Wanda would be the one to take over, everybody started saying ‘No’ and immediately started yelling, ‘Wanda resign,'” Yomarili Rosa, who protested last week outside La Fortaleza, the governor’s mansion, told USA Today.
Per the line of succession in Puerto Rico, the next-in-line should technically be the Secretary of State Luis Rivera Marín. However, Marín resigned on July 13 after the Center of Investigative Journalism (CPI), an investigative news outlet in Puerto Rico, published 889 pages of messages between Marín, Rosselló, and other officials revealing lewd exchanges about women and mocking their constituents.
Vázquez, who became the island’s second female governor, responded to the release of the messages, saying in a statement that she recognized “the frustrations and pressures of the day-to-day can be expressed in an incorrect way within the privacy of a friendship.”
“I have to express the deep regret this causes me as a woman, as a mother, as a professional and as a citizen of this beautiful island,” she continued in the statement. She was not among the 11 top aids that exchanged profanity-laced messages with Rosselló about other politicians, the media, and celebrities.
Here’s why people are protesting Vázquez:
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