Gov. Ricardo Rosselló’s looming resignation leaves Puerto Rico’s government in shambles and may strengthen the hand of federal overseers tasked with imposing austerity on the bankrupt island to pull it from a years-long financial crisis, Bloomberg reported. Since the disclosure of scandalous text messages among Rosselló’s inner circle, the administration had already lost its investment officer, press secretary and two fiscal agency heads — one of whom lasted just five days. The governor’s chief of staff quit Tuesday night. The treasurer left last month amid a federal corruption investigation. It looks increasingly likely that the mass exodus would be capped Wednesday, with local newspapers reporting that Rosselló was planning to resign within hours. The turmoil comes as two courts are set to hold hearings that may train a harsh spotlight on the administration’s dysfunction and create an opening for a federal oversight board to consolidate power and impose deeper budget-cutting measures as part of the more than two-year-old bankruptcy. The political crisis and corruption probes surrounding the administration may undermine opposition to such cuts by strengthening the view that the government is inefficiently run and rife with overspending, potentially freeing up more money for creditors. What’s going on is the island’s biggest political conflagration in a generation, one that follows the debt crisis, an economic recession that has lasted more than a decade and Hurricane Maria in 2017, a storm that killed thousands.
