Some things were suspected or intuited, and others were even known, but even so, reading any of the pages of the summary of Operation "Union" makes your hair stand on end. Some insist on continuing to defend the ...
Some things were suspected or intuited, and others were even known, but even so, reading any of the pages of the summary of Operation "Union" makes your hair stand on end. Some insist on continuing to defend the presumption of innocence of those who have confessed their crimes before the judge, but the truth is that each of those pages is a chilling reflection of what was happening in Lanzarote.
What began with two tapped phones as a result of a complaint, ended up uncovering an authentic chain of criminal acts, and many others under suspicion. Some are scandalously serious. Others, next to them, seem even "small". But even in behaviors that are not typified in the Penal Code, the level of decay that certain environments on the island had reached is reflected.
In fact, even almost a newcomer from the youth of the PIL appears in the conversations, showing more "inexperience" and clumsiness than the rest, but showing his anxiety to collect a commission of 400,000 euros from a businessman for reclassifying a plot in Arrecife. Apparently, he knew where he was getting into when he started his militancy.
However, and despite the forcefulness of the summary and the confessions themselves, it seems that some still want to look the other way. The PIL had been asking for prudence for months, asking for respect for the presumption of innocence. Saying that we had to wait for the secrecy of the summary to be lifted. And now? Haven't they seen it? Haven't they read the media these days? Or is it that they have not been surprised or scandalized?
Really, and considering that we now know that seven months ago, after his arrest, both José Miguel Rodríguez and Ubaldo Becerra confessed that they had received bribes, the patience that the PIL has had is curious. Or had their colleagues hidden their confession from them and, even, in the case of Becerra, that in his statement he directly implicated other members of the party in the plot? And if so? Don't they have anything to say now?
The leader of the party, Dimas Martín, and other important members of the PIL are accused of being part of an organized association to commit crimes (and now there are confessions on the table), and the Party of Independents of Lanzarote is not going to say anything? And what is more important: are the parties that are going to vote on a motion of censure with them in Arrecife next Monday, and especially the PP, not going to do so either?
Operation "Unión" has shown the murky Lanzarote underworld, in which corruption had been advancing like a cancer for years, making it seem natural to fill the pockets of politicians to achieve certain objectives. Whatever they were. The impudence reaches such a point that in the conversations that the defendants had while being watched by the UCO, they seem to try to convince themselves that they are not doing anything wrong, and that with their businesses "everyone is happy". It is as if the conscience that perhaps one day they had, had been dead and buried in a very dark place.
The vulgarity and obscenity with which some negotiate and haggle, and the experience that others demonstrate, trying not to be explicit in their telephone conversations, is simply nauseating.
In one of the telephone conversations, Dimas Martín warned that he was not going to answer calls from telephones that he did not recognize, because all the people on this island who do not have work call him. Probably, it will not be all of them. In fact, most of the people who today make up the hard lists of unemployment in Lanzarote, will not know Dimas Martín or any prominent member of the PIL. Unfortunate them.
But Dimas's phrase, although it is neither the most serious, nor the most compromising, nor the most scandalous of the summary, reflects a whole model of society. That generalized corruption in which certain businessmen, certain politicians and certain citizens enter into the game of indecency, which in this case is also that of illegality. And in this way, even if they are "all happy", they also harm those who are or decide to stay on the sidelines. To the pockets of the taxpayers, to the businessmen who do not go through the hoop, to the young people who really thought about entering politics to improve things.
After knowing a good part of the content of the summary of Operation "Unión", the well-meaning people of Lanzarote are on the verge of nausea. But if the announced motion of censure is consummated next Monday, and two confessed criminals are allowed to continue marking the present and the future of the Arrecife City Council, the nausea will be complete.
