On the evening of October 13 (Black Tuesday) governor Luis Fortuño signed into law a nefarious piece of legislation, which eliminated compulsory membership fees for Puerto Rico's Bar Association. See coverage from El Nuevo Día , Caribbean Business , and El Vocero . It is a punitive measure directed at this institution for expressing solidarity towards laid-off government workers on September 25, 2009 (Black Friday). It is also a long-awaited measure by New Progressive Party lawyers, activists, legislators, and fanatics intolerant of dissent, and who have always considered the PRBA a constant irritant, a thorn on their side. As jubilant as some members of the governor's cabinet, legislators, supporters, and fanatics might feel, remember this: as functional or deficient a democratic society might be, it cannot be complete without civil society institutions and dissent. The weakening of the Puerto Rican Bar Association achieved just that. The PRBA might still exist, true, but it...
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