The representatives in San Bartolomé of Canarian Coalition (CC) and Canarian Socialist Party (PSC-PSOE) revealed this Friday after the plenary session their intention to reach a pact, together with Assembly For Lanzarote (APL), for a new government majority in the City Council.
The impediment to repeat in San Bartolomé the governance agreement reached both in the Island Council and in the Arrecife City Council, seems to reside in the figure of the mayor, Miguel Martín.
Thus, the spokesperson for the PSC-PSOE, Andrés Stinga, explained that his party is not worried about being left out of the government group, but assured that in order to save the current situation of "apathy" it is necessary for the mayor, Miguel Martín, to leave the presidential chair. "He always said that when he lost the majority he would leave and he hasn't done so. At the moment what he is trying to do is confuse, divide, while he asks his CC colleagues to reach an agreement with the PSOE. He only sows discord." Stinga also sent a message to the councilors who still govern with Martín. When APL, PP and CC "go into opposition, I guarantee that in a few days there will be stability in San Bartolomé".
For his part, the spokesperson for CC, Juan Antonio De la Hoz, assured that his party is "dialoguing with the only opposition party with which an agreement could be reached, the Socialist Party", but insisted that Coalición supports the mayor and that the real culprits of the current situation are Olimpia Martín, from the Nationalist Party of Lanzarote (PNL) and José Manuel Morales, from the Canarian Nationalist Center (CCN), who for "political reasons" have broken with municipal stability.
Also from the opposition, the spokesperson for Citizen Alternative May 25 (AC-25M), José Antonio González, did not rule out or confirm that in the meeting next week within the assembly formation the members of his party will reconsider the possibility of intervening to end the current situation in San Bartolomé, in which recently the refusal of AC made impossible the motion of censure that was foreseen against the mayor.
González recalled that, in any case, "what is clear is that the current instability in the City Council has not been created by Citizen Alternative", but that it is maintained because "two defectors from the Party of Independents of Lanzarote, two councilors from CC and three from the Popular Party are maintaining a mayor who is a political corpse".
The coalition, confronted in Plenary
The Plenary this Friday, in which 21 motions from the opposition were approved, highlighted the current differences between the councilors of CC and the respective councilors of PNL and CCN.
De la Hoz relied on a legal report from the Secretariat, based on the modification of the Law of Local Finances, to request that both Olimpia Martín (PNL) and José Manuel Morales (CCN) join in the "Group of the Non-Attached", as has recently happened to the councilors split from the PIL in the Island Council.
The controversy, which would affect the composition of the informative commissions, and in which it was discussed whether for the purposes of the Electoral Board of the area Canarian Coalition is an electoral coalition or of parties, acquired a quite heated tone and, according to Miguel Martín, would be clarified for the next Plenary.
Without any proposal from the government group, the Plenary approved various initiatives issued from the opposition, always with the abstention of the eight councilors of the Government and the favorable majority of PSC-PSOE, AC25M, PNL and CCN.
Among these, the improvement of the lighting of certain streets, the signaling of several crossings, the adaptation of sidewalks in Playa Honda, the creation of a municipal ordinance and a telecommunications tower to regulate the situation of Montaña Mina, the appearance of Ángel Aparicio and Ángela Millán to analyze certain aspects of Education and Social Affairs, the presence of Local Police and Civil Guard after the successive robberies in Playa Honda, the equitable access to documentation in the informative commissions, the opening of an investigation related to the wind power contest of the Canarian Government, as well as preventive measures against the threat to the Canarian palm trees of the red weevil.
According to the government team, which accuses the opposition of applying the "steamroller" and of "paralyzing" the Corporation, "the City Council is an administration with its limitations, and it is impossible for us to execute all the agreements that they bring forward by majority".
The opposition, on the other hand, considers that the current situation is not their responsibility and that the government team has adopted the role of victim when "they have not even deigned to show us the budgets that they said they were going to approve last October, nor does the mayor answer the questions of the previous Plenary, nor do we know anything about the General Plan". The solution, at least it is hoped, will arrive in the next few days.