The Secretary of Organization of the Canarian Coalition (CC), José Miguel Barragán, has described as "electoralist" the decision taken this Friday by the President of the Government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to remodel his cabinet through the change in four ministries, with the appointments of Bernat Soria as Minister of Health; of Carme Chacón, in charge of Housing; of César Antonio Molina, in Culture, and of Elena Salgado as head of Public Administrations.
This decision implies the departure from the Executive of the Minister of Public Administrations, Jordi Sevilla, and the Ministers of Culture and Housing, Carmen Calvo and María Antonia Trujillo. Sevilla will be replaced in Public Administrations by Elena Salgado, who changes portfolios, after serving as Minister of Health.
The Canarian Coalition also "regrets" that Zapatero has "forgotten" to have a Canarian minister and, in a statement, Barragán maintains that it is "a forced remodeling that responds to interests of a different nature. In his opinion, Zapatero "tries to divert attention from issues that are gripping his administration and uses a ministerial crisis as a smokescreen".
Likewise, José Miguel Barragán points out that "it is not credible that, eight months before the elections, if they are not brought forward, these changes could lead to significant shifts in government action, hence the arguments to justify this remodeling are weak".
Similarly, the CC leader believes that Zapatero has sought "a way out of the problems that his partners in the Catalan tripartite have raised. "Minister Sevilla was not to his liking and they demanded another profile of minister to facilitate the pending transfer of powers. This is, therefore, a change blessed by ERC and IPC-EV, with the acquiescence to possible future agreements of CiU, which will also serve to pave the way for Catalan linguistic demands," he adds.
The spokesman for the Canarian Coalition in the Parliament of the Canary Islands also regrets the "umpteenth" oversight by Zapatero, who, in his investiture speech, guaranteed the presence of a Canarian minister, "an option that he has rejected when he has had the opportunity, an occasion that he could also have used to replace the head of the Social Affairs portfolio, Jesús Caldera, given his repeated failures with the Canary Islands with regard to the transfer of immigrant minors," he says.
José Miguel Barragán also considers it "paradoxical" that this decision is taken by the President of the Government just a few days after telling the country in the Debate on the State of the Nation "that everything is going well, that his administration has been full of successes in all departments. If this is the case, why are the ministers of success being changed?", the nationalist leader asks.
However, Barragán wants to express his wish to the new ministers that they do their job as well as possible and hopes for collaboration and coordination in matters that affect their departments and that have to do with the Canary Islands.
ACN Press
