"The situation is bad at this moment. The economy practically does not exist, there are accounts that are at zero, a series of debts that are pending and that will have to be paid when they can be paid." This is how Ramón Bermúdez, acting president of the PIL, spoke about the delicate internal situation that the party is going through. In addition to referring to important debts that they cannot face, Bermúdez has also questioned other aspects of the last electoral campaign. "The clumsiness of not doing things according to the rules has been committed", said the current president, who has even questioned the continuity of the organization.
Bermúdez explained that, after assuming the presidency of the party after the resignation of Fabián Martín, a "situation report" is being prepared on "the accounts of the last four years." Once finished, that report will be provided "to all members, not only to those who have requested it." Then, and "with all the information on the table and the cards face up", the roadmap of the acting president is "to go to an extraordinary congress" and "there decide if they want the PIL to continue, because someone presents themselves and they want to be there." In this way, he has expressed his doubts about whether the organization could disappear. "As of today, I'm not clear about it", he acknowledged on Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero, pointing out that "the PIL has to make a very deep reflection."
"Of course the situation is not easy at all. You have to be more serious, more responsible. If it continues (the PIL), it must function in a more objective, more transparent way, subject to the due control mechanisms, such as the court of accounts itself," said Bermúdez, stressing that they are "obliged to do so, like all political organizations, by law."
"I think that was not being done," he added later. "Things have to be done according to the established procedures and rules. Let's not forget that the party is subject to the Law on Financing of Parties," he said, assuring that "Ramón Bermúdez will certainly not be found outside that legal framework." However, he himself points out that it was not like that until his arrival at the presidency. "In the campaigns themselves, an electoral administrator is appointed and all the income and expenses that are made in the campaign should not be in the PIL accounts, but in the administrator's," he began explaining. "When we refer to the electoral campaign, not to other issues, which also exist, everything had to be linked to the administrator's account and that has not happened".
"Ramón Bermúdez is not going to run for president"
After referring with this harshness to the management that has been done of the party in recent years, Bermúdez has been asked about the possibility of being a candidate for president of the organization in the extraordinary congress that will be convened after the summer. "No, no; I am not going to be president, I have never had that intention or that aspiration", he stressed.
Bermúdez has made it clear that he holds the insular presidency in a "circumstantial" way and "because he was the first when Fabián (Martín) resigned" from this position. "I committed myself to taking the party to a congress, in which I will participate and give my opinion, but Ramón Bermúdez is certainly not going to run for president," he concluded.
"Surprises" in a debt account that "is increasing"
Although he has preferred not to give a figure or make an approximation of how much the party's debts amount to, Bermúdez has made it clear that "of course, for an organization that has its accounts at zero, it is not a small amount of money". In addition, he says that "there are more and more surprises and the account is increasing."
"When you see the numbers, the accounts and the reality... of course you have to change many things," Bermúdez pointed out. Asked about who was in charge of those accounts, the current acting president of the PIL has pointed to the "previous president" and the "previous campaign manager."
"Neither in politics nor in life itself can you spend what you don't have," said Bermúdez, who also sees his situation as complicated. "It is difficult, it is difficult because people call who have done a service contracted in a not regular way and of course there is money that is owed to them and that must be paid," he indicated, referring to the workers of the past electoral campaign who, as La Voz de Lanzarote published, denounce that they have not yet been paid.
That debt and those 'irregular' contracts, according to Bermúdez himself, is "not only with workers, but also many small companies that do work" for the party, with which he stresses that he has also "sat down" and has "explained that the jobs have to be contracted properly, because we must be subject, as we are by obligation, to the court of accounts."
"We did not have real knowledge of what the situation was; and what we did not know or expect is that there was, for example, such a basic issue as commissioning work without the economic support to pay for it," he explained. Thus, Bermúdez points out that "trust is broken by these things." "One believes that things have changed, that there are new generations, new ideas and ways and in the end it is discovered that the ways are still the same as always", he lamented.