Last Tuesday, I asked President Clavijo in the plenary session of the Parliament of the Canary Islands about the measures his Government was taking regarding archipelago cohesion, one of the main problems our land has and that we have been dragging on for too many years. So that he would not accuse me, as is usual with him, of using incorrect data or not knowing where what I am telling him comes from (even though I cite the CIS), this time I decided to use a source that not even he could dispute: his own words spoken in the Debate on the State of the Canarian Nationality. And not even then. In that debate, he himself stated that the model that has been bet on in this land for the last 34 years had proven to be a failure. And that something had been done wrong when in Parliament they were still talking 34 years later about what it meant to live on non-capital islands or about the solidarity treatment of peripheral islands.
Lying in Parliament once again, he stated that he never used that kind of term such as "non-capital islands" and ended up calling Podemos "separatists", "independents" and "sectarian". Clavijo demonstrated once again that both he and his Government and his party live in a constant paradox: nationalists who attend the October 12th parade in Madrid and then wave the 7-star flag. And what is worse, he does not blush with these inconsistencies, and defends them, even stating in the Parliament of the Canary Islands that his flags are at the same time the red and yellow and the starred one.
And there are more paradoxes, since they support in Madrid the Government that has mistreated the Canary Islands the most, that of Mr. Rajoy. And thus, they are sustained in a continuous balance while they continue to forget the most important thing: to govern for the good of this land.
Archipelago cohesion is not waving a tricolor flag or proclaiming oneself as the only voice of the Canary Islands, election after election. Archipelago cohesion is working for a more just and egalitarian society, with fewer differences between Canarians. We cannot talk about cohesion in a land where one in three people is at risk of social exclusion and 27% of people have no job, nor any prospect of finding one. We live in a land where the five richest people could spend more than one million euros a day, while another 142,590 people receive no income of any kind.
However, we see how the priority of this Government is to push forward a Land Law that bets on 88 different territorial models, and not a common model for the Canary Islands. The municipalities of the Canary Islands will compete, with this law in hand, to urbanize with golf courses or shopping centers, by having more land available. The island model will only be the sum of the decisions of the town councils, and therefore, the Canarian model will in turn be the sum of the decisions of the seven councils. This is a territorial disintegration of the Canary Islands. A separate issue is the danger that the Canary Islands run, taking into account that 40 percent of our local corporations have been affected by cases of corruption.
A Government that continues to not bet on renewable energies and bets on gas, instead of moving towards energy sovereignty with our own natural resources.
A Government that turns its back on food sovereignty, letting our primary sector be reduced to ashes. Currently, this sector only contributes 1.4 percent to the economy of the Canary Islands. It is the lowest contribution in the entire history of the Archipelago. And this is due, among other things, to policies such as rolling out the red carpet for products that come from abroad, while ignoring and looking the other way when our farmers and ranchers cry out for help.
We have a president who has dedicated himself to touring Spain, instead of walking the most needy neighborhoods of our land.
Coalición Canaria claims to be the only party that defends fair financing for the Canary Islands, but then supports in Madrid the Government that mistreats it the most and most violates the financing system.
We have only found one aspect of Clavijo's management that has managed to unify our people; more and more Canarians do not want him to be president again. Fake nationalists, no thanks. The land and the people of the Canary Islands are truly defended.
Noemí Santana, Spokesperson for Podemos in the Parliament of the Canary Islands
