“Congress is so strange. A man stands up and says nothing. Nobody listens to him… and then everyone disagrees” (Boris Marshalov, Russian actor).
For decades, Lanzarote has been the stage where political parties have rehearsed, with varying degrees of success, their discourse on public responsibility. However, beneath the eloquence in the form of sustainability, transparency, and social progress, lies an essential contradiction: those who proclaim themselves custodians of the general interest seem to forget that managing also means preserving, and that governing is not just about executing budgets, but about safeguarding a moral and environmental legacy.
In their eagerness to perpetuate their relevance on the electoral chessboard, parties have turned public administration into an exercise in survival, which translates into erratic planning, unfinished projects, and policies designed for media immediacy. Thus, those who promise efficiency find themselves trapped in a rough and tedious bureaucracy that they themselves help to swell; those who advocate for economic diversification end up surrendering to the tourism monoculture; and those who declare eternal love for the island silently consent to its gradual and fierce degradation.
In its partisan aspect, island politics has become a caricature of itself: hollow and incapable of inspiring hope. Responsibilities are diluted in a labyrinth of shared competencies where accountability is disguised with triumphalist press releases, slogan-like declarations, and institutional photographs.
The parties urgently need a change (not a replacement) in their community aspirations. To commit to legitimizing themselves as effective interlocutors and administrators of public affairs. To shed the lack of "modesty" in their actions and discourse. Particularly relevant seems to be the view of a significant portion of citizens regarding those responsible for protecting the common good, whom they perceive as just another problem
Faced with this panorama, Lanzarote needs a policy that does not fear reflective slowness over electoral haste, one that restores the word "management" to its noblest meaning. This requires a more articulated civil society, less complacent, capable of demanding without fear and proposing without partisanship. No improvement is possible if there is no increase in civic responsibility and social education: strengthening democratic pathways at the community, institutional, and social organization levels, etc.
The parties' contradictions are a reflection of our own tolerance for the grotesque. We don't need saviors: we need managers with conscience, leaders with humility, and citizens with memory
The parties are stealthily fleeing from the truth, from that civic fraud they have established with rules and particular interests that prevent them from being a current support of democracy. They have underestimated the "brutality" of the weariness that this "politics without purpose" feeds among citizens.
On the surface, they have moved towards collegiate and more plural leadership structures, but they still do not tolerate dissent, disagreement, or diversity of perspectives that deviate from the ideological premises set by the authority or its internal powers