The negotiations between Canarian Coalition and Assembly for Lanzarote with the aim of reaching a pre-election agreement for 2007 continue, but the first important divergences are beginning to come to light. These discrepancies are focused these days on the timescales that each of these formations is considering. First it was the island president of CC, Mario Pérez, who ten days ago, in a press conference, set a deadline within which he considered it necessary to close the agreement: next June 30. From ApL, Celso Betancort argued, in an interview with La Voz, that his party "does not accept impositions and we do not enter into deadlines", and considered that in any case it was "a suggestion" from CC. But from this last party, its national vice president and at the same time mayor of Haría, José Torres Stinga, was forceful, stating that if it is not before the end of the month, there will be no pre-election pact with ApL.
"If by June 30 we do not reach a definitive agreement with ApL, CC will give a final dismissal to the issue," said Torres Stinga in statements to the program "Buenos Días, Lanzarote", from Radio Lanzarote. The nationalist leader added that he understands Celso Betancort's statements and also that ApL proposes different deadlines, but anticipated that CC will remain firm regarding that deadline of June 30.
"It is not that we are imposing anything on anyone, but our formation considers that the agreement must be closed within that peremptory period, because extending the negotiations in time would be counterproductive and we are not going to accept it, and as a party we are within our right to do so," said Torres Stinga.
The CC leader based this position on the negative experience of the last national elections, in 2004, when that formation reached a last-minute agreement with the PIL in the elections for the Senate and the Congress of Deputies, with very bad results, since neither of these two parties managed to get their candidates into those Chambers. "We already know from that experience that last-minute pre-election agreements are not good, and we are not willing to repeat a mistake that we have already made," said Torres Stinga.
Currently, although the reasons why CC and ApL have not yet closed an agreement have not been explained publicly, and while this exchange of statements makes it clear that neither of these two parties is convinced that they will be able to achieve it before the end of this month, the main differences would be focused, on the one hand, on the fact that CC would intend to incorporate ApL under a single acronym, while the latter formation advocates a single list but under the acronym "CC- ApL", and on the other hand, on the distribution of candidacies, since the large number of public positions that ApL currently has makes it very difficult to ensure the continuity of all after the next elections in a unified list with CC, a coalition that in turn has emerged strengthened in Lanzarote within nationalism, after the results of the latest polls.
