The reform of the Canary Islands Electoral System is, without a doubt, one of the most important challenges that the Parliament of the Canary Islands will have to address throughout this Legislature.
The economic crisis and the role played in addressing it by institutions in all areas has caused an unprecedented political crisis, characterized by disaffection towards public management, politicians and their organizations, and a widespread demand for change, more than just changes.
The lack of representativeness attributed to the Electoral System is one of the main criticisms. A deficiency that in the Canary Islands acquires an exceptional motivation due to its special characteristics, as it is a territory divided into islands with different characteristics.
We socialists never agreed with the increase in caps that we consider arbitrary and unfair. From the first moment, we refused to support a rule aimed at depriving the Parliament of the Canary Islands of plurality. A law designed to guarantee the internal control of certain political formations, at the cost of leaving thousands and thousands of Canarian women and men without a voice.
But despite these unfair caps, reality has prevailed. Although not because of the greatness of vision of the political forces that make up that kind of restricted access club that is the Parliament of the Canary Islands.
It has been the outrage over a crisis that the weakest have had to pay for, when it was caused by others, that has led to the emergence of new forces with the capacity to overcome those arbitrary caps.
It has been the distrust towards politics and politicians that has led to the birth of these new forces that we have called emerging, managing to break the artificial barrier that intended to turn our Parliament into the closed preserve of a few political forces.
But that original sin with which we have been living for too many years still underlies. Those caps that embarrass any democrat are still in place. We still have an unavoidable task pending: to restore to the Canarian Electoral System the representativeness that was once taken away from it.
Let's not wait for a new wave of indignation, of just anger, to be the one that allows new forces to enter this Parliament. Let us be capable of undoing the deceitful rule with which it was once intended to curtail the right of the rest of the forces to access the Parliament of the Canary Islands. Let us have the greatness to return to the autonomous Chamber the representativeness that legitimizes it.
We must ensure in this Legislature that the clamorous cry of "they do not represent us" makes no sense in the Canary Islands. Let's try to get our seats fairly, without using marked cards. Let us return to the Parliament of the Canary Islands the legitimacy and dignity that a twisted reform took away from them, which discredits us all to the extent that we continue to consent to it.
And yes, let's also talk about triple parity. Surely the deputies of the less populated islands will be able to convince everyone of its necessity, of its full validity as a corrective element to the uneven distribution of the population among the islands.
And let's also talk about the regional list proposed by the Socialist Party. A mechanism that aims precisely to enrich the system of balances that we have established with an additional list, which will have to be headed by whoever aspires to preside over the Canary Islands.
In Democracy, there is no rule that is unalterable by nature. There can be no taboo that stops political discussion when citizens demand that we review our institutional architecture from top to bottom.
The only thing that is not acceptable is to continue maintaining an unfair electoral system that ignores the vote of thousands and thousands of citizens.
*María Dolores Corujo, general secretary of the PSOE of Lanzarote and president of the socialist group in the Parliament of the Canary Islands.
