The president of Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista (NC-BC), Román Rodríguez, and the Secretary of Organization, Carmelo Ramírez, have decided to give way to renewal in the new leadership of the party, as announced this Saturday by the one who has been its leader since 2005, when the party was created.
In the presentation of his management report to the sixth national congress of the party, Rodríguez said that neither he nor Ramírez will head any candidacy, after 40 years together in politics and "sharing decades of struggle", because "it is time to pass the baton".
Rodríguez stated that they will be by the side of the new positions that emerge "not to supervise, but to support" the party, and that there will be more veterans of the organization who will also give way to renewal.
The congress that NC is holding is marked by the internal rupture that has led relevant municipal and organic positions of the party to abandon it and found a new political force, which has been one of the problems that the party has had to face in these last three years, according to what has been pointed out.
The "independent mayors" who ran with NC-BC on the electoral lists wanted changes in the organization and, although the means were provided for it and the celebration of the sixth national congress was even brought forward by a year, "there was no way" to reach an agreement because they had "a plan designed by a minority" and intended "a change of course", Rodríguez indicated.
The objective was the "liquidation and subordination to the nationalism of conservative insularism", Rodríguez stated, who also said that they thought they were "going to bend" NC-BC, but they are "wrong" because NC is a project that "has roots, principles, ideology and program, which gives guarantees of future".
Regarding the new party that emerged from those who abandoned NC, Rodríguez pointed out that they have said that "they are neither left nor right, which is what those who are right-wing say".
In NC, however, "we are Canarianists, nationalists, left-wing, feminists and internationalists" and we defend peace and disarmament, unlike others "who do not know what they are".
He elaborated that NC-BC represents the nationalist left and is "essential on the political map of the Canary Islands" and that for this reason it is necessary to make an effort of "confluences".
In addition, he stressed that the sixth congress that is being held this weekend in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria responds to the slogan 'Roots, values and future'.
NC emerged 20 years ago to, precisely, recompose the space that the Canarian left represented, and in these two decades, it has been in the institutions and close to the people, and they managed to transform the triangle of poverty in the southeast of Gran Canaria from the municipal level, and achieve many other changes in the aforementioned island, through the Cabildo, as well as in the Parliament of the Canary Islands and in the Parliament of Spain, and in areas of influence of the European Parliament.
This congressional meeting is attended by 300 delegates from all the islands and will define the policies of the next period and a new organizational model in the eight island territories to offer solutions to the problems of the Canary Islands, Rodríguez remarked.
And for this, he said, four presentations on politics, statutes, feminism and equality and youth will be submitted to debate, as well as 17 resolutions in which they will defend, among other issues, the right to self-determination of the Sahara and the Palestinian people.
In his speech, Rodríguez also stressed that in NC "we are not in politics to have a little job", but because politics is "commitment, honesty and defense of the general interest".
In his management report, which was approved unanimously, Román Rodríguez reviewed the 20 years of left-wing and progressive nationalism of NC, which have been possible thanks to its members