A survey commissioned by the San Bartolomé City Council reflects that the Socialist Party would be the most voted force in the municipality, almost reaching an absolute majority, with between 8 and 9 councilors, to the detriment of Canarian Coalition (which would only obtain 2 or 3) and the Popular Party (which would be left with 3). The data from this survey has been made public by the socialists of San Bartolomé, who accuse the Government Group of "total and absolute lack of transparency", because they claim that they have been refusing to give them that Municipal Issues Survey, carried out by the Statistics Department of the Consortium for months.
The Socialist Group assures that they requested this information "to the Corporation Plenary through a motion as a matter of urgency in which it urged the creation of a Special Information Commission on Statistics, in order to have knowledge of the data from the latest opinion poll carried out by the City Council". Despite the request, this motion was left on the table "as the urgency of the motion presented had not been declared, but it should have been included in the agenda of the ordinary Plenary held on July 5, 2006, which did not happen".
The explanation given by the mayor of the San Bartolomé City Council is that an error of omission could have been incurred and "he openly declares that because he does not know the text of our motion, he asks to leave it on the table, promising to include it in the next Plenary, to be held on August 2, 2006". Already in this plenary session, the motion is approved unanimously, although "it is decided not to create a special commission for this matter, but the text of the Municipal Issues Survey will be included in the Information Commission on Finance and Statistics", dated for September 8. Although the delivery of the Survey is delayed again because the technical staff was on vacation at that time, so it is postponed until September 29, five days before the Plenary session.
Finally, the socialists assure that they have received the Municipal Issues Survey two days before the celebration of the Information Commission. "But when we proceeded to study it, we realized that it had been delivered in a biased way, since the sections 'Intention to Vote for the San Bartolomé City Council' and 'Intention to vote for the Island Council of Lanzarote' were missing, among others". Upon realizing the lack of these two epigraphs, they demand the mayor that this information be provided to his group before the session is adjourned, "since otherwise, they would inform the Civil Guard of the events that were taking place", explains the socialist spokesperson. "After waiting for four hours and without leaving the mayor's office, he agrees to definitively deliver all the documentation concerning the matter".
The Municipal Group believes that the lack of this information was due to the data clearly unfavorable to the Government Group but very favorable to the Socialist Municipal Group, so they tried to "stop the delivery of the data, but seeing that the siege was closing on them, they had no choice but to deliver the information that suited them, when this survey was carried out with public money and it is information that as Councilors of the Corporation, we have every right to know".
The socialists point to Javier Betancort, councilor of the Treasury of the City Council, as responsible for this lack of transparency. They believe that he is the architect of "all the maneuvers carried out" to not provide the information "and who adopts the decision to hide, distort, and even lie, about information necessary for the opposition to freely carry out its exercise of control and supervision of the governing bodies".
