The three people who were elected in the Podemos primaries to occupy the second, third and fourth positions on the party's list for the Cabildo -Griselda Martínez, Pablo Ramírez and Mara Benítez-, as well as the other four people who were part of the candidacy presented by Carlos Meca in that process, have announced that they will renounce to be part of the list headed by Nona Perera and that they will leave the purple formation when the current term ends. In addition, together with them, Meca himself will leave Podemos, who has been the general secretary of Podemos since its creation in Lanzarote, and the team that has been working with him on the island for the last four years.
As they explain in a statement, this will mean the disappearance of the Insular Council of Podemos, which was elected in February 2015 and has continued to meet weekly to date, and part of its municipal structure. In the case of the current Podemos Circle in San Bartolomé, they state that it will also disappear completely, while the one in Arrecife will register significant losses, including the current councilor in Arrecife, Daniel Cabecera, who will also leave the purple formation within four months.
The decision implies renouncing to participate in the primary processes that are currently open, although they specify that the withdrawal of membership in Podemos will not be effective until next May, "out of respect for the voters who placed their trust in this project in 2015". "Leaving now would mean leaving Podemos without representation in the Cabildo", explained councilor Griselda Martínez, pointing out that renouncing the seats at this time would not only mean the resignation of the three councilors that the formation has in the Cabildo, but also complicate their replacement, given that the people who occupied the following positions on the list headed by Carlos Meca are also going to leave the party and therefore could not assume as councilors either.
The primaries, "a mockery of the true members"
"We believe that it is the most responsible thing we can do at this time. This has been a very thoughtful decision and because of that reflection we had to have, we have kept a prudent silence since the result of the primaries to the Cabildo was known", explained the councilor, who considers that what happened in that process was "shameful" and "a mockery of the true members of the party". And it is that she affirms that the regional leadership "not only had clear interferences to try to condition the result of the primaries but, in addition, to achieve that objective, it allowed people outside the party to mark the future of Podemos on the island and even openly encouraged them to register and vote". In fact, she recalls that in those primaries "there was an evident participation of other parties with which Nona Perera's candidacy promised a supposed confluence and, as if that were not enough, she herself recognized that she had even received votes from people from Coalición Canaria and the Partido Popular", which ended up marking a vote in which Perera prevailed over Carlos Meca by a single vote difference.
"We entered this project with enormous enthusiasm and with that same enthusiasm we have worked during these four years and we will continue to do so until our commitment to the voters ends in May, but right now the disappointment is too great to be able to continue beyond that date", said Martínez, who affirms that far from correcting the course after those primaries, Podemos has continued to experience other sad and regrettable episodes that have led them to finish adopting this decision and making it public now. "We deeply regret it for the members who, despite external interference, placed my colleagues and me to occupy the first positions on that list, but we trust that they will understand our decision", she added.
"We have been respectful, but we have also asked for respect"
For his part, the one who has been general secretary of Podemos in Lanzarote, Carlos Meca, explains that there are several factors that have triggered this crisis and the first is in "the centralist and authoritarian vision that the regional leadership of Podemos has had from the beginning, first with Meri Pita and then with Noemí Santana". "We have always been respectful with the Podemos bodies, but we have also asked for respect for the organization in Lanzarote", affirms Meca, who recalls that the very name of the candidacy that his team presented to those primaries, "Deciding in Lanzarote", was a declaration of intentions, since there are issues that they have been questioning internally for years, such as the fact that the island's candidates for the Parliament of the Canary Islands or the Congress and the Senate are elected outside of Lanzarote.
"This is what made it possible for María del Río to become a regional parliamentarian and that she is now going to repeat on the list", emphasizes Meca, who points to the deputy as a key factor in this crisis. "She did not manage to take control or gain the support of the members of Podemos on the island, and not even that of the circle of her own municipality, and she decided to seek help from the regional leadership, which in turn saw the opportunity to carry out a coup d'état on an island that she could not control and that did not give her the submission she demanded".
Meca places the origin of that operation in November 2017, when the consultation was carried out with the party members on the possible motion of censure in the Cabildo. "A large majority of members chose not to make the socialist José Juan Cruz president because of his murky past, demanding that the candidate be the next on the PSOE list, and at that moment María del Río, a personal friend of Cruz, decided that it would be the last vote she would lose in Podemos", affirms Meca. "But the most serious thing is that to achieve it, neither the deputy nor the regional leadership cared about putting the party in the hands of people outside Podemos, who are the ones who have ended up defining the primaries and who, judging by what is happening now, could have had as their only objective to blow up this formation for their own benefit", he adds.
From "illusion" to "total disappointment"
"The illusion with which we entered this project, believing that there was another way of doing things, has turned into total disappointment", affirms Griselda Martínez, referring to the "betrayals, disloyalties and dirty games" that they have seen both on the part of some of their colleagues "as well as the people who were supposedly going hand in hand with those colleagues, and who now also seem willing to leave them on the sidelines". "To do these things you have to be worth it, and it is clear that we are neither worth it nor do we want to be worth it for that", affirms the councilor on behalf of the entire team that has decided to leave the party.
According to them, "the first disappointment" came from the hand of Nona Perera herself, who two days before the deadline for registration of candidacies reached an agreement to go to the primaries in a joint list headed by Carlos Meca and with her as number two. "That agreement was coordinated by the regional head of Institutional Action, Juan Márquez, since the regional leadership said it was advocating for a consensus list. However, a few hours before the deadline, the regional Secretary of Organization of Podemos, Pino Sánchez, called me to tell me that the agreement was broken, that Nona Perera was going to present her own candidacy and that Juan Márquez was renouncing to continue coordinating the process in Lanzarote", revealed Meca.
"Then came Perera's grotesque campaign, supported by Noemí Santana and based on asking for the registration and vote of people outside Podemos, even from other political parties, and on assuring that the confluence with Somos Lanzarote was only possible if she was the head of the list", they recall. "Somos Lanzarote has told me that if you are the Podemos candidate, the confluence with them is impossible", Perera told Meca. "Suddenly, Somos Lanzarote, without having yet closed any agreement with Podemos, became a key piece in Nona Perera's candidacy and conditioned the primary process. The members of Perera's list in the primaries were agreed with Somos Lanzarote (her number two, Yurena Corujo, is a member of that party) and we could all see the photo of Tomás López, together with Pedro Hernández, at the celebration dinner of Nona Perera's victory. The next morning, Perera herself, after winning the primaries by a single vote difference, publicly recognized that she was aware that people from Coalición Canaria, Partido Popular, Partido Socialista, Izquierda Unida and Somos Lanzarote had voted for her", they add in their statement.
"The champions of confluence have many explanations to give"
"Those who have been negotiating with Somos Lanzarote and those who presented themselves to the primaries as champions of confluence have many explanations to give", assures Meca, "especially if Somos Lanzarote finally seals an agreement with Nueva Canarias, after having conditioned the Podemos primaries. It is unacceptable that even today the Podemos candidate for Congress for the island is Myriam Barros, who belongs to Somos. They have taken the regional leadership for a ride and have blown up Podemos on the island with the approval of Noemí Santana and María del Río, who only had the objective of removing the members of the party who were not of their line".
In addition, the general secretary of Podemos on the island questions that in order to finally win a primary, María del Río "not only allied herself with other parties, but also with the media of Juan Francisco Rosa, which is directed by an old friend of the parliamentarian". "This media defender of corruption, which has spent the entire legislature trying to discredit Podemos, suddenly became interested in the primary process of this party to make a shameful campaign in favor of Nona Perera. We even witnessed the grotesque spectacle of seeing the president of the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés (who is pending to sit on the bench for corruption precisely for the accusation exercised by the Podemos group in the Cabildo), publicly supporting Nona Perera and exchanging praise with this candidate, who in turn came out publicly in defense of one of the most murky operations of San Ginés' management", he affirms.
After what happened in those primaries, Carlos Meca's team asked the party to review the internal processes, at least closing the census of members to participate earlier, "in order to prevent episodes like this from happening again and to guarantee the cleanliness of the votes". However, "the lack of response to this and other questions" has led Meca and his team to announce their departure and not participate in any of the processes still open.
