The Autonomous Directorate of Podemos Canarias has sent a letter to its members in Lanzarote asking for "calm and tranquility" after the announcement made this Monday by what has been the party's leadership on the island, headed by Carlos Meca, who will leave the formation after the next elections, also renouncing to participate in the list to the Cabildo headed by Nona Perera, for which they had obtained the main positions in the primaries held by the party.
"We deeply regret the resignation of these people, also made 'on hold', with an extension to the month of May, and we call them to reflect, because we must always accept what our registered people have decided. If they really do not feel identified with Podemos, the logical thing is that they resign as soon as possible, and not in this way", questions in that writing the Secretary of Autonomous Organization of the party, Pino Sánchez.
In this regard, it should be remembered that what the three councilors of Podemos in the Cabildo, one of its councilors in Arrecife and other militants of the formation have announced is not a resignation, but their departure from the party and also from politics when this term ends. As for why they do not make that resignation effective now, they have explained that the reason is to "fulfill the commitment made to voters", since handing over their minutes now would mean leaving Podemos without representation in the Cabildo four months before the end of the legislature. In fact, they say that it would not only imply the resignation of the three councilors -with the time that their replacement may take-, but that the people who follow them on the list would not take office either, since they also plan to leave the party.
"There is no island organization in Podemos Lanzarote"
In the letter sent to the members, the regional leadership also questions that Meca's team has referred to the fact that this will mean the disappearance of the Island Council of Podemos in Lanzarote. "There is no island organization in Podemos Lanzarote since two years ago", says Pino Sánchez in his writing, referring to the documents approved in the Citizen Assembly Vistalegre II in 2017, and acknowledging that what was approved there has not yet been fulfilled.
According to those agreements, the Island Councils should indeed disappear but to be replaced by a new body, which should be elected in a process convened by the regional leadership. For this purpose, they had been given a deadline, in which the Island Councils would continue to function provisionally, but that deadline was met without Podemos Canarias taking the necessary steps to replace that body. Therefore, the Citizen Council of Lanzarote continued to meet, as explained by the party's leadership on the island in the statement they sent this Monday, but the regional leadership now states that it does not recognize that body, even though it did not create the one that should replace it either. "It is impossible to resign from a body that has already ceased to exist", says the regional Secretary of Organization, stating that they have left this and the rest of the Canary Islands without governing bodies.
Precisely the "centralist and authoritarian" attitude of the general secretary of Podemos in the Canary Islands, Noemí Santana, is one of the reasons that has led the main organic and public positions of Podemos Lanzarote to announce their departure from the party. In addition, they accuse the regional leadership of having given a "coup d'état" on the island through the regional deputy María del Río and with the support of other parties, which they believe decisively influenced the primaries to the Cabildo, which gave the victory by one vote difference to Nona Perera against who has been the general secretary of Podemos in Lanzarote, Carlos Meca. In fact, they describe as "grotesque" the campaign led by Perera, inviting people from other parties to register to vote, and emphasize that she herself acknowledged later that she was aware that she had been voted not only by parties with which she had announced a confluence that is now in the air, such as Somos Lanzarote, but also even by Coalición Canaria and the Partido Popular.
"The primaries were perfectly legal"
"The primaries in Podemos Lanzarote were perfectly legal and audited. Therefore, we are not going to allow that, given the fact that they did not obtain the expected result in them, the whole system is questioned. If they have any problem with the development of the primaries, there are internal channels to express them, which they did not do at the time. In fact, irregularities were detected in another island during the audit and it was brought to the attention of the organization so that they could be corrected by means of a new audit", responds the regional leadership in this regard, although from Lanzarote the legality of the process has not been questioned, but that the candidacy of Nona Perera called during the campaign to register and vote people outside the party and even acknowledged later that she received votes from militants of other rival formations.
What Pino Sánchez does emphasize is that in the Podemos primaries to the Cabildo "almost 400 people" voted, highlighting that it is "more than any other party on the island". Precisely this is one of the points that is questioned from Meca's team, which considers that the census of registered members should have been closed before, to avoid that last-minute registrations of people who could be outside the formation or even of other rival parties could condition the primaries.
"Regarding the method of election of our autonomous candidacies, which was the same system used in all our primaries, again, we did not receive any complaint from Lanzarote before the realization of the same. It is not understandable that someone participates in a system and only questions the rules of the same after the results", adds the letter that Pino Sánchez has addressed to the members, in which she expresses her "surprise" at what happened and describes as "unheard of" the statement sent by the leadership of the party in Lanzarote.
