Oswaldo Betancort will receive 87,000 euros as president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote. The results of the telephone survey, conducted in 48 hours with the vote of 300 residents of the island, offer the nationalist leader the lowest option of the four offered by the Coalición Canaria.
61% of those surveyed decided that the nationalist president should receive 87,120 euros. Although the remuneration was put to a vote, the range started from 87,000 euros gross per year to 104,000 euros, above the more than 67,000 euros that his predecessor María Dolores Corujo (PSOE) received.
Of those surveyed, only 4% supported the president receiving 104,544 euros; 2% endorsed the increase to 98,196 euros; 15% voted for Betancort's own proposal to receive 92,928 euros. The rest of the votes went to the winning option. In addition, 18% of those surveyed preferred not to comment.
During the beginning of the plenary session, the opposition criticized Oswaldo Betancort for the urgent call. "It could have been convened with a little more margin. If it is to avoid blocking an island staff payroll, in the case of the town councils, the Government group often took time not to collect their payroll and prioritized paying the employees when at that time there was not even time to pay it," defended the councilor of Nueva Canarias Óscar Noda. "The staff payrolls could have been observed and then the rest," he stressed.
"There is no urgency, what exists is the haste to put an end to a shameful episode as soon as possible," insisted the socialist Ariagona González during her speech. In this line, she described Oswaldo Betancort's intention to raise his salary to 92,928 euros as being "driven by excessive greed and with a plenary session whose urgency admits no justification. Out of respect for the dignity of this institution and this corporation, do not hold this plenary session and move it to tomorrow first thing in the morning," said the PSOE spokesperson in the Cabildo.
In addition, the director of the Data Center of the Cabildo of Lanzarote presented, during the session, the report on the consultation with the resident population on the Island carried out to collect information on the annual salary of the President in accordance with current legislation.
The Data Center, with a thirty-year track record designing and carrying out surveys in a reliable manner, estimated that the Presidency's request to carry out said consultation could be resolved by conducting a survey of the population, which was carried out through telephone interviews on July 12 and 13, 2023.
In addition to inquiring about the amount of the presidential salary, the questionnaire included questions related to the economic situation of the island and households, as well as the public investment priorities that, according to the opinion of the population, should be addressed in Lanzarote.
The attached document provides the results, and the technical sheet can be consulted in the annex. Likewise, complementary information, such as the questionnaire, the tabulation and the micro-data, is available on the web.
Procedure
Most of the interviews were done with calls to landline phones (45%) and the rest to mobile phones (56%) of residents between July 12 and 13. From the Data Center of Lanzarote, 2,028 calls were made in total, of which 300 were valid.
