The plenary session of the Parliament of the Canary Islands has ratified this Tuesday the designation as representatives of the Autonomous Community in the Senate of Pedro San Ginés, nominated by the Canarian Coalition (CC), José Antonio Valbuena proposed by the PSOE and Australia Navarro as a candidate of the Popular Party (PP).
In the plenary session in which the vote was held to elect the regional senators, José Antonio Valbuena received 26 votes; Pedro San Ginés, 20; and Australia Navarro, 15; and in addition, seven blank votes were counted.
The nationalist Pedro San Ginés, with a degree in Business Sciences from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, was president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote from 2009 to 2019 and in the local and regional elections last May he was elected councilor of the Arrecife City Council, although he finally resigned from his position to be elected deputy of the Canarian Nationalist group for the Lanzarote constituency.
The Canarian Coalition has supported the designation as regional senator of Pedro San Ginés, who is being investigated by the Investigating Court number 2 of Arrecife for the alleged crimes of belonging to a criminal organization, prevarication, bribery, money laundering, embezzlement and falsehood in relation to the contracting and payment of fees. His designation as senator will cause his judicial cases to pass to the Supreme Court.
José Antonio Valbuena, proposed by the PSOE to be a senator for the Canary Islands, will replace Santiago Pérez in that position and until the recently concluded legislature he was the Minister of Ecological Transition, Fight against Climate Change and Territorial Planning of the Government of the Canary Islands.
Valbuena was a PSOE senator for the island of Tenerife between April 2019 and July of that same year, when he resigned from the position, and he was also Minister of the Environment, Sustainability and Security in the Cabildo of Tenerife.
For her part, María Australia Navarro, a law graduate, has been a senator of the Popular Party for Gran Canaria in the VII Legislature and regional deputy after the 2003 elections, a position she resigned from after being appointed Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Security of the Government of the Canary Islands (2003-2005).
Two years later she returned to the Regional Chamber, where she served as president of the Popular parliamentary group until the last legislature, and among her organic positions she assumed the presidency of the PP of the Canary Islands until November 2021, when she was replaced by the current leader of the formation, Manuel Domínguez.
The acceptance of the designation as senator entails the resignation of the condition of regional deputy.