"The contracts that the government group of the Cabildo has been hiding and to which the Podemos group in the institution has managed to access confirm the clientelistic use that the president, Pedro San Ginés, has been making of public funds for years." That is what the purple formation denounced this Friday, which has made public some of these contracts to denounce that "through arbitrary decisions", San Ginés "distributes tens of thousands of euros among associations and media with minor contracts, in some cases with absolutely scandalous criteria."
According to the spokesperson for Podemos in the Cabildo, Carlos Meca, "an example of this is that the institution paid, through the Tourism Board, 10,000 euros to an association just for posting photos of the island for three months on its social networks." "According to the contract, the Lanzarote Business Association was to make six weekly publications on Instagram and three daily on Twitter and Facebook, although it was not even specified from which accounts," he explains.
In the case of the account that the association has on Facebook, "some days it did not publish any posts and others it limited itself to one or two similar to those that it already published and continued publishing afterwards, once the contract was finished," says the spokesperson for Podemos, who also points out that the association's followers "do not reach 4,000." "A ridiculous figure that many personal Facebook accounts exceed," says Carlos Meca, who recalls that the Cabildo has its own official accounts on this social network, such as that of Turismo Lanzarote, "which have eleven times more followers," specifically 44,153. As for Twitter, "the impact of this association is even less, since its account only has 2,400 followers," he adds.
The material "was not even prepared by the association"
To this is added, according to the spokesperson for Podemos in the Cabildo, that the material they published "was not even prepared by the association, but was provided to them by the Tourism Board, as specified in the contract." In addition, although it was supposedly a tourism promotion contract, the document signed by the Minister of Finance, Luis Arráez, indicates that it is a "minor sports sponsorship contract."
However, those who signed the report of need for that contract were the director of the Tourism Board, Héctor Fernández Manchado, and the Minister of Tourism, Echedey Eugenio. In it, to justify this payment of 10,000 euros for three months of posts, they pointed out that "currently Lanzarote has more than 10,000 foreign community residents," and that "all these people regularly maintain contact with their relatives and friends through social networks," so "the use of social networks becomes a way to channel Lanzarote abroad, especially in the United Kingdom."
"It so happens that the association with which this contract was signed has a link with the Lancelot group to publish its news on the collective's website," says Meca, who announces that Podemos will request the appearance of Luis Arráez in the next plenary session of the Cabildo "to clarify this and other contracts signed by the Minister of Finance and Contracting."
Payments to media "of limited circulation"
In the list of minor contracts examined by Podemos, there are also "a good number of payments to digital media of limited circulation and with disparate amounts." According to the purple formation, "for ten monthly banners, the Cabildo paid 3,745 euros to elperiodicodelanzarote.com (500 declared daily visits), 1,444 euros to isladelanzarote.com (370 declared daily visits) or 1,605 euros to noticiasdelanzarote.com (200 declared daily visits)."
This shows "again", in his opinion, "the need to have a media study that puts an end to the arbitrariness on the part of the president, who places advertising in local media without taking into account their audience."
A year "without complying" with the agreement to create the Monitoring Committee for Contracting
"Contracts like these explain why the president has been failing to comply with the plenary agreement to create the Monitoring Committee for Contracting and convene the periodic area meetings for a year. He intends to continue distributing public money at will without anyone overseeing his excesses," warns Carlos Meca.
For this reason, Podemos has announced that it will take the implementation of that Monitoring Committee for Contracting to the plenary session of the Cabildo next Friday "for the third time." "Despite the fact that it was already approved in separate plenary sessions of the Cabildo in March and June of last year, the president has not yet executed the plenary agreements that would allow greater control over contracting through that monitoring committee, as well as convening the area committees every three months in which the awarded contracts must be presented," they point out from Podemos.
In this way, they point out from the party that "the Cabildo continues to spend hundreds of thousands of euros based on minor contracts that escape the control of the opposition, without the mechanisms provided for in the Corporation's Regulations having been put in place so that the opposition groups can oversee the work of the different departments and areas of the Cabildo."
