Coalition Canaria has made it clear this Thursday that it is already trying to close a pact with the Municipal Platform of Haría of José Torres Stinga to present a motion of censure in the municipality; and also that it will not adopt measures against the councilman of Haría Armando Bonilla, who in the Plenary session of last Saturday breached the guidelines given by the party and voted in favor of the new agreement of the Cueva de Los Verdes.
In a statement, the local secretary of CC in the municipality, Víctor Robayna, assures that Bonilla has "rectified" and “has assumed that he made a mistake” in that Plenary session and maintains that he conveyed this to the Local Assembly of the party this Wednesday. However, the councilman himself has not wanted to confirm it.
“I am not going to speak for now”, the councilman responded when consulted by La Voz. In fact, he has not even wanted to clarify if it is true that he now considers his vote a “mistake”. “I have not read the statement”, “I don't know what they have put”, the councilman alleged in order not to pronounce himself. “I did not make a mistake, but I do not know what the statement says or in what context”, he added when insisting on whether or not he ratified what he did and said last Saturday, when he justified his vote with a long intervention in which he included harsh criticisms of the island leadership of his party and the former president of the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés.
In that Plenary session, he stated that he was not going to enter into a “war of egos and power” and that he was going to do “the best for the municipality of Haría”, supporting that addendum that went ahead thanks to his vote, and by which the City Council will receive 12.9 million euros from the Cabildo as compensation for the sentence that ruled in favor of the Consistory.
Although that addendum is the reason that CC has used to break the pact in Haría, the party has decided to 'pardon' its councilman, who voted together with the PSOE in the Plenary session. In fact, the local secretary of Coalición Canaria in Haría, Víctor Robayna, has assured in a statement that during the Assembly held this Wednesday he “conveyed his gratitude” to Bonilla “for facing the latest events with integrity and assuming that he had made a mistake by not complying with the party's guidelines”.
Thus, CC has now focused on another councilman who is not following the dictates of the party, Soraya Brito. In her case, in the plenary session she abstained together with two other councilmen from CC (only Víctor Robayna followed the mandate of the island leadership and voted against), but afterwards she has been the only one who has not resigned from her areas of government in Haría.
“He invited Soraya Brito to reflect on her decision to stay in the Government Group together with the PSOE”, Robayna has asked her, who explains that the councilman did not attend the Assembly. However, in this case they have not confirmed the opening of a file for now either, in an attempt for the councilman to comply with the mandate and also leave the government group.
“We have had some very difficult days but we have made the best decision. We could not continue sharing government with those who, we consider, are making decisions unilaterally that are detrimental to the municipality”, Robayna pointed out. “Although I can understand the reasons that Soraya may have for not having resigned from her areas, I obviously do not share them”, he added.
Regarding Armando Bonilla, the local secretary of the northern nationalists celebrates that he did comply with the order to break the pact. “I believe that he has had a noble and courageous gesture in explaining before the Assembly the reasons that led him to vote in favor of the PSOE's addendum with respect to the Cueva de los Verdes, although finally, complying with the guidelines of the party leadership, he resigned from his areas of government, as did three other colleagues”, Víctor Robayna pointed out.
In addition, after the crisis that the formation has faced -which voted totally divided last Saturday, issuing up to three different votes, and with a councilman who still does not comply with its guidelines and continues in the government-, CC assures that with this it “closes ranks, is reinforced, and places all its trust and hope in the councilmen who, now from the opposition, will continue working for Haría and its neighbors and will assume new challenges in order to achieve a hopeful future for the municipality”.
These “new challenges”, as they explain below, involve presenting a motion of censure against the PSOE and forming a new government together with their former party colleague, José Torres Stinga, who was expelled from the formation precisely in the middle of the power struggle with Pedro San Ginés and a battle for La Cueva de Los Verdes that ended in the courts. And paradoxically, the execution of that sentence is what has served as an argument to break the pact with the PSOE and to reunite Torres and CC.
“The Local Assembly of CC authorized Víctor Robayna to, together with the island leadership of the party, take the steps he deemed necessary to achieve a new majority that gives governability to a City Council that at this time has been left with a minority government with three councilmen from the PSOE and the councilman Soraya Brito, who would move to the group of non-attached”, concludes the party in its note.
