Weaseling a Way Out

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City Hall and the National Puerto Rican Day Parade board late Thursday opted to solve their Oscar López Rivera problem in the most weaselly way possible. It’s plain that Mayor de Blasio was desperate for an out from his vow to march in a parade that would honor an unrepentant terrorist, so his people reached out and got OLR to announce he wouldn’t accept the “National Freedom Hero” honor at the June 11 event.

Easy enough to do: The board’s chair, Lorraine Cortes-Vazquez, works for the mayor, and OLR No. 1 Fangirl Melissa Mark-Viverito is a close de Blasio ally.

López Rivera obliged with a column published Thursday afternoon announcing he’d merely march like anyone else. Then de Blasio could at last issue a stop

bothering me statement: “Oscar López Rivera agreeing to step aside from any formal role in the parade is a critical step forward.”

Yet it took reporters hours to get parade spokesmen to confirm that this actually meant he’d be given no honors: They were that reluctant to admit even that.

Even now, OLR may yet act as a de facto grand marshal, leading the parade in the company of Mark-Viverito and other notables. It’s not even plain that the board won’t give him the honor after the parade.

That is: Parade organizers won’t say they’ve rescinded the honor to López Rivera, only that they “respect his decision to walk up Fifth Avenue, ‘not as an honoree.’ ”

In short, they’ve given no one any reason to trust them. They just beat a small tactical retreat in the face of overwhelming public opinion and the loss of every major sponsor, not even beginning to resolve the doubts that may keep those sponsors away next year.

As Angelo Falcón, president of the National Institute for Latino Policy, said, “The time for damage control has passed.” But damage control was all de Blasio and his allies would offer.

So López Rivera will march in a parade protected by the men and women of the NYPD, whose duties may not even let them turn their backs on a man whose group bombed 1 Police Plaza.

And the mayor will march a careful distance away, showing the same having-it-both-ways lack of integrity and leadership that he has all through this sorry affair.