The Contentious-Administrative Court Number 5 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the Contentious-Administrative Court Number 2 have issued judgments in which they declare the appointment of Jorge de la Guardia as Island Director of Employment and New Technologies of the Cabildo null and void. De La Guardia replaced Feliciano Díaz in the position after his resignation, and the designation was approved in the Governing Council chaired by Pedro San Ginés last February.
In the proposal submitted by San Ginés himself, it was stated that Jorge de la Guardia "holds a Degree in Geography and Spatial Planning and that his curriculum vitae sufficiently accredits his training, competence and professional experience" and that "therefore he meets the necessary profile for the aforementioned position." However, in the curriculum vitae of Jorge de la Guardia that appears in the file and to which La Voz has had access, regarding his work experience, it is only recorded that he worked as a leisure and free time monitor in a summer camp for 21 days in July 2017; as a hiking guide for an association, for one day, in May of the same year; and that he completed external internships in the Area of Environment, Territorial Sustainability and Water of the Cabildo of Tenerife from March to May 2014.
At that time, both the then Councilor of Ciudadanos, Benjamín Perdomo, and the Association for Professional Public Management of the Canary Islands took this decision to the courts, understanding that the designation was carried out "without the principles that guarantee publicity and competition" and violating other legal precepts. Finally, both hearings were held this July and the new Island Corporation agreed with the facts presented by the plaintiffs, so judgments of conformity have been issued.
"Grievous and contrary to law"
"The circumstance that makes it more grievous and contrary to law is the fact that this position of Island Director of Employment was already subjected to public competition, under the principles of publicity and competition, along with other island directorates such as Social Welfare, in 2016, with a merit assessment and employment list being made," Benjamín Perdomo stated in his lawsuit, in which he questioned that said list and appointments had been "rendered ineffective, resorting to a direct appointment of a person who did not even present himself at the time, without respecting that employment list." "They should have called the next one on that list to take office, that is, the number two at the time, with the Cabildo of Lanzarote itself now going against its own actions," he argued.
Likewise, the former Councilor of Ciudadanos denounced that the figure of "senior official" of Island Director of Employment and New Technologies was introduced in the appointment proposal, a figure that he assured "does not exist in the organic regulation of the Cabildo" and that, in his opinion, is "a kind of legal fiction" that they have created "to mask" what "is actually an island director." A new denomination that he considers they used "to circumvent the law", a "product of the most twisted legal engineering", since he pointed out that "the figure of the advisor is already foreseen for direct appointments of personnel."
For its part, the Association for Professional Public Management of the Canary Islands also agreed in its lawsuit that the "obligation to follow procedures with publicity and competition for the appointment of management personnel" was "ignored" and that the "general system of legal reservation of management positions in favor of career civil servants of subgroup A1 was disregarded, without complying with the requirements to except such general reservation so that it can be occupied by personnel from the private sector."
In addition, according to the Association, there was also a "failure to pre-audit the administrative act of appointment" and "the obligation to motivate the act."
