With or without the support of his government partners, the mayor of Arrecife, María Isabel Déniz, reported this Friday to the Plenary of the Corporation a decree issued last November, by which she hired the services of Felipe Fernández Camero, who was secretary for years of the capital Corporation, and from whose position he was expelled by decision of the Ministry of Public Administrations -confirmed by the National Court after the appeals filed by Fernández Camero-.
The former secretary is waiting to serve a six-month suspension sanction, when his current situation of voluntary leave ends. According to the Mayor's decree, Fernández Camero now returns to the City Council as a "legal advisor" of the Corporation for one year, a space in which he will receive almost 23,000 euros, specifically, almost 3,800,000 pesetas.
From the opposition, the spokesman for Citizen Alternative 25 de Mayo (AC-25M), Andrés Barreto, announced after learning of the decree that he will challenge it, alleging that the former secretary must comply with the six-month disqualification sanction imposed by Public Administrations after the incompatibility of the activities that the former secretary exercised both in the public and private spheres was proven.
For Barreto, with the "personal information transferred to Camero by the mayor, who has avoided a public contest, the right of the rest of the advisors who could opt for the position is thus broken".
For her part, María Isabel Déniz denied such accusations, alleging that "the instructors are the officials who resolve these issues, without the political part participating at all." According to the mayor, the opposition is therefore accusing the technicians in this case, who are really the instructors of the files."
"Different standards"
The opposition asked during the Plenary that the same standards be used for all City Council workers. AC-25M, Nationalist Party of Lanzarote (PNL) and Popular Party (PP) denounced the disqualification for three years of a municipal employee accused, "without sufficient evidence" according to Barreto, and "by simple political persecution" according to the PNL spokesman, Pedro de Armas, precisely for alleged labor incompatibility.
The opposition asked that the case of a municipal cemetery worker who could have been dedicated to collecting insurance policies while he was an official be investigated, before the file was closed and before, according to the PP, the City Council has to face a possible favorable sentence to the worker. The AC spokesman requested, on the contrary, that an administrative file be opened to the funeral home Santiago El Calero, which, he assured, has been changing the color of tombstones in the cemetery charging for it, and which he accused of allying with another funeral home to attack the official complying with instructions but not being able to prove the employment relationship with the worker.
According to the mayor, who apparently reduced the expulsion to the sanction with pity, the information provided by AC and PNL on the sanctioning file was "biased and manipulated", while for his part, the Councilor for Human Resources, Juan Antonio Santana, stated that there was clear evidence of the judged labor incompatibility, since an audio tape provided by the Works Council apparently reveals how the worker took advantage of his position in the City Council to sell policies.
In the case of alleged "mobbing" or labor pressure of which the opposition accused the Councilor for Public Works, Luis Morales, against the shovel operator Juan Manuel Viñoli, Andrés Barreto argued that it had been precisely the Labor Inspection that had issued a resolution reinstating the employee in his occupation that, "for months, was not effective." The motion of urgency of Citizen Alternative, asking for an institutional declaration from the City Council against this type of "labor harassment" and the apologies of the alluded councilor, labeled from the PNL as a "dictator", was not approved.
For his part, Pedro De Armas himself also accused Morales of threatening the Atlético Atiense football team with not letting them continue playing the rest of the season due to some "hooliganism" that some of their fans have apparently done.
