Dismantling the lies of the ATI Regime is an arduous task. Not because they are subtle, but because they spread them with thousands, millions of euros of public money spent on propaganda. And because they take advantage of people's ignorance, in the manner of the caciquismo of always.
But defending the truth is an essential task to help form a free public opinion, without whose existence democracy becomes a farce.
The Crane Case is just another case; but it perfectly exemplifies the ways of acting of a system of power that has eaten away at democracy in this land. And, luckily, almost everything is documented; because everything happened when Clavijo and his cronies were drunk with arrogance and sure of their impunity.
The officials who were in charge of managing the Crane Service, temporarily intervened by the City Council (an original temporary intervention, but without a deadline) conclude in the Report they present after checking the situation (April 8, 2014) that they qualify the breaches of the concessionaire company as very serious and extremely serious offenses, which "will be sanctioned" by means of the expiration of the concession, according to the Terms and Conditions and the Service Regulations of the local corporations.
Clavijo and his people failed to comply with a legal obligation ("they will be sanctioned"), granted an illegal loan of 120,000 euros to the concessionaire company and hid the Report under lock and key. It was never heard of again.
Two months later (June 5, 2014), the officials themselves present another Report whose Seventh section says: "...the origin of the continuity of the provision of the public service of removal of vehicles from the public road under an administrative concession regime should be studied, in the terms that legally proceed and suppose a better guarantee of the general interests".
Anyone who knows how to read will find it difficult to agree with me that a lot of oil has to be extracted from this sentence to pin on the officials the extension, five more years, of the contract to a defaulting and bankrupt concessionaire company, as the only solution and as a "better guarantee" for the general interests.
Well, that is what Clavijo and José Alberto Díaz have been saying since then, and to date.
The Director of the Security Area, Rosario Hernández Eugenio, was very careful when favorably reporting the extension of the contract "without prejudice to the applicable regulations regarding the termination of contracts".
It was in her Report of August 6, 2014; but by then the General Comptroller had already formulated objections of illegality and warned, on July 31, that the extension of the contract proposed by José Alberto Díaz lacked "legal basis", also underlining the "special relevance" of the lack of accreditation of compliance with the "obligations of the concessionaire included in article 20.2 of the Particular administrative Terms and Conditions of the contract approved by the City Council".
Also very careful was who has been Director of the Security Area and, later, of the Finance and Economic Services Area: Estanislao González Alayón, who in his Report of July 17, 2014 washes his hands and goes off on a tangent. And he has been a main actor in this whole story.
But José Alberto Díaz and Clavijo pushed on. They commissioned a report - one more - paid with public money to their in-house lawyer for the usual purpose: to flout the repeated objections of the Comptroller's Office and, therefore, the law.
With these reports they fabricate an artificial problem, abusing the lack of information of many citizens: here there are two legal criteria and we choose one of them. Precisely the one that suits their interests, they had decided beforehand and pretend to justify with a report made to measure.
They only forget something: that the one who corresponds to the prior control of legality of all acts and resolutions that have economic consequences on the municipal budget is the General Comptroller. And this extension has committed every year, for 5 years, 650,000 euros of the laguneros. According to the Comptroller, against the law.
And they also forget what the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Court has reminded us all, when ordering that the judicial investigation of this Case be reopened: that when the Mayor ignores the objections of the Comptroller's Office "the resolution he adopts must be in accordance with the rules of the legal system, and may not be based on reports whose conclusions contravene said rules". Because, otherwise, the resolution he dictates "is purely and simply the product of his will, unreasonably converted into apparent" legal norm. "And the result is an injustice".
It is the way of acting of the ATI Regime in a chemically pure state: they handle the money of the taxpayers at whim, and outside the law, to fulfill you go to know what commitments. And, above all, to pay clients and perpetuate themselves in power.
To finish the pre-established script, it only remained to lie. And that is what they have been doing since then, without cutting a hair.
By Santiago Pérez