The former Podemos councilors in the Cabildo, Carlos Meca, Pablo Ramírez and Griselda Martínez, have returned 11,426 euros to the Cabildo, corresponding to the money they received as a group in the Island Corporation. The transfer was made this Thursday, after canceling the bank account they had opened to manage these funds, which are granted as a monthly allowance to each group based on their number of councilors.
"We have made this return after confirming with the secretary of the Cabildo that it was what had to be done," explained the former group spokesperson, Carlos Meca. However, the secretary also confirmed that it is "the first time that a group returns the surplus money", since what other groups do is transfer these funds to the accounts of their political formations.
"We have understood that the allocation to the political groups of the Cabildo was to cover their own expenses derived from the work as councilors, and not to generically finance the parties," said Meca. "And this is also established by the organic regulations of the Corporation, which, until it changes, is the one that establishes the use of the institution's funds," he specified.
Legal assistance and study on the Timanfaya aquifer
In the case of the Podemos group, in the past term, part of this allocation was used for legal assistance and to request reports on documents presented by the government group, such as the Island Plan, the Hydrological Plan and the Special Plan of La Geria, on which the allegations presented by the purple formation were based.
In addition, they also paid with these funds for the first study they commissioned on the possible existence of an aquifer under Timanfaya, which they presented more than two years ago together with another report that confirmed the indications found by the engineer Carlos Soler. The Cabildo then committed to complement it with new studies to determine the quantity and quality of the water for its possible use, but it took them more than a year to start them and the results have not yet been made public.
Farewell to public activity and Podemos
Now, once the term for which they were elected has concluded and three days after receiving the last income corresponding to the group, the three former councilors of the purple formation have liquidated that account, returning to the institution the money they did not get to use.
In addition, the three have already disassociated themselves from public activity and have left Podemos, as they announced they would do after the crisis that opened up in the party following the primaries held by the formation to elect its head of the list to the Cabildo. In those primaries, in which Nona Perera defeated Meca by one vote difference, Griselda Martínez and Pablo Ramírez were elected as numbers two and three on the list, but resigned from being part of it, denouncing the "interference" in the process by the regional leadership and by "people outside the party", who even got to vote in those primaries.
It should be remembered that during the past term, Carlos Meca, Pablo Ramírez and Griselda Martínez brought a motion to the Plenary to demand that all parties account for what they were spending the money they received from the institution for the group on, but the initiative was rejected. In many cases, the groups directly divert the monthly money they receive to their political parties.
