Two years ago, after the opening of the oral trial against him for a crime of prevarication was ordered, Pedro San Ginés stated that he was “eager” to sit in the dock to “clarify any doubt”. However, judging by what happened this Tuesday, the experience must not have been satisfactory for him.
It is true that in some moments of the trial he was able to remember his glorious times as president, deciding who he answered questions to and who he didn't, and even telling his lawyer what he had to ask him. But what he could no longer do was speak for the officials of the Cabildo, as he had been doing for years, and more specifically for the former secretary, who sits with him in the dock.
This time, all the journalists - and there were many accredited for the occasion - were able to listen to Francisco Perdomo explain that San Ginés did not ask him for any report before ordering the seizure of the desalination plant. Neither oral, nor written, nor by smoke signals. Thus, literally and with all the letters: “No, I was not asked for a report”. In fact, the former secretary even avoided using the word “advice”, which San Ginés is also clinging to now, and assured that they only had a single conversation about the subject and that it was “brief”, “informal” and “improvised”.
For his part, the man who boasts of courage and eloquence must have left that day the courage at the doors of the Courts, because he did not answer a single question from the Prosecutor's Office or the popular accusation. Seventeen minutes, which is said soon, Pedro San Ginés was enduring a barrage of questions from the lawyer of the accusation without giving any answer. The man who has been saying for years that he has nothing to hide with this issue, suddenly became mute.
That same night, already protected behind a computer, he recovered his ease and sent a statement, supposedly in the name of his lawyers, in which he even had the gall to say that if he had not responded to the prosecutor it was “to speed up the trial” (comments are even unnecessary, especially after what happened only a few hours later). In addition, in that same note he again attacked “some media” and in particular, once again, against this one. And once again, he tried to deny reality. He tried to deny what everyone had been able to see and hear on this occasion. He tried to give his own version of what the secretary had declared, but what he achieved was to highlight the nerves that that statement had unleashed.
In case there was any doubt, that nervousness was confirmed the following morning, when his lawyers pulled an ace out of their sleeve to get the trial suspended and everything that happened the day before annulled. To turn what was experienced during the entire first day into a kind of failed general rehearsal that they should repeat. This is the only way to understand that they waited until Tuesday to say that a Criminal Court was not competent to hold this trial, because the penalty requested exceeds ten years of disqualification and therefore must be judged by the Provincial Court.
The indictment requesting that penalty was two years and four months old, but they did not say it when it was received, nor did they say it when the case was referred to the Criminal Court Number 3, nor when the date of the trial was set, nor in any of the infinite appeals that they have filed even before the Constitutional Court, nor on Monday at the beginning of the hearing. Then, when the preliminary issues were raised, they did not make any mention of it either. They only invoked alleged grounds for nullity again to request that the case be dismissed - by a judge who the next day said was not competent, so she could not have resolved those preliminary issues either - and that the hearing not be held. And not even when they saw that last attempt rejected did they raise it. They did it on Tuesday, after a first day in which, apparently, the bench in which San Ginés was “eager” to sit had become very uncomfortable.
They found a gap, yes. A formal failure to cling to. They sowed doubt and after threatening to denounce the magistrate, they managed to get her to inhibit herself. And that will undoubtedly justify the fees of the lawyer hired by San Ginés, who signed an expert in corruption cases for his defense. And it should also make the Justice and all those who have intervened in the procedure review their own mechanisms, because obviously something like this should not be repeated, among other things because of the time lost that this entails for the administration of justice itself. But at least, the former president should have a minimum of shame so as not to say again that what he intends is to “speed up” the trial.
What he did was let the game begin and when he didn't like how it was going, he broke the deck and asked that it start again and with another referee. That was the card that his defense had saved, because it is to be assumed that it was not the night before when they realized that the trial should be held by the Court. Or maybe yes, and they were enlightened after spending the night awake looking for another way to stop what was happening.
Because what was happening, no matter how much San Ginés denies it, is that the statement of the former secretary had attacked the waterline of his defense. He was brief, yes. He even didn't finish many sentences. But he let his lawyer do it in his place, while he nodded, to make it clear that he completely disassociated himself from the decision taken by the president when he ordered the seizure. That on his part there was neither “verbal report”, nor “verbal advice”, but only a single consultation to which he responded without having “studied the file” or “knowing the internal details”. That he limited himself to giving an opinion “in general”, “improvised”, “informal” and “without carrying out any serious and profound study on the matter”. And all those expressions, no matter how much the former president insists, are not from La Voz de Lanzarote, but from the former secretary and his lawyer, who is clear about what his line of defense is.
Curiously, after listening to that, Pedro San Ginés' lawyer did not try to ask him a single question, despite the obvious contradictions with what his client had declared. And neither did Francisco Perdomo's lawyer ask a single question to San Ginés, who had come to affirm that he was “advised at all times” by the former secretary and even that he was the one who told him that he did not need either judicial authorization or even a written legal report to seize a private property. They - and their defense strategies - will know why they decided not to delve further into the possible wounds. Why they didn't even try to clarify those contradictions, and allowed each one to unload on the other the responsibility for the decision, and therefore for the alleged crime being judged.
It is true that Francisco Perdomo could have lied in the trial. And Pedro San Ginés could also have lied. As defendants, both have the right to do so. In fact, for the popular accusation (and also for the judge who investigated the case for years, and who closed it concluding that there were indications of a crime to take them to trial), that last thing is precisely what happened, since it maintains that the two acted in common agreement, together with the third defendant, to carry out this measure knowing all of its illegality.
In any case, that is what the sentence will have to resolve in its day. For the moment, San Ginés has managed to gain time and delay that day. But until then, what he cannot pretend is that only his story continues to be disseminated, even ignoring what the rest of the accused have declared. If what Pedro San Ginés wants to say is that Francisco Perdomo lied in his statement, he should say it clearly - and have the courage to raise it in the next trial - and stop trying to kill the messenger, because he has been doing that for too many years.
In all the time that the former president has spent accusing this media of “lying”, “distorting” or “manipulating”, he has not filed a single complaint, or lawsuit, or anything similar. And he has not done so because La Voz can documentarily prove absolutely everything it publishes. That is why he has only limited himself to launching cyclical attacks against this media, using in his day the halls of the Cabildo or sending his councilors to do so, or now on social networks, which is all that remains for him. Meanwhile, the reality is that he is the one who is now being investigated for having launched false accusations in a Court against other people, who has just added another charge for that. But apparently, that the media publish the accusations that he launches against others does not seem to him to be doing “parallel trials”.
La Voz de Lanzarote is not to blame for what the accused who sit with him in the dock declare. Just as it is not to blame for being charged in a case (or in several). Nor for his appeals being rejected. Nor for losing all the trials he lost during his time at the head of the Cabildo. Nor for having sat in the dock this week, nor for going to sit again. Not even, although it is hard for him to believe, this media is going to have any influence on the sentence that is handed down when the time comes. Whatever it may be, La Voz will echo it, just as it has echoed during all these years all the judicial resolutions that have affected him and many others like him.
The problem is that for years, Pedro San Ginés' obsession has been to control the story. Only what he considered to be news was news. He could only be asked what he considered he should be asked. And only what he thought was convenient should be published. Everything else - even if it was to collect the content of a sentence - were “manipulations” and “distortions”. And to control that story he used his position and the public funds he managed through it. With many media, that worked for him; but not with this one, much to his regret.
Now, he has tried to turn the trial into that same thing, as if the battle were being fought outside the Court. For a single day that has been held of hearing, San Ginés has sent two press releases - one prior and one nocturnal after the first day - and has organized an appearance of his lawyers at the doors of the Courts. As if the important thing was in what is said outside and not in what is said inside the Room.
In the trial he had too many questions from the prosecutor, those of the popular accusation and even the testimony of all the experts and most of the witnesses who were cited for the following days. In fact, on the first day his defense also tried unsuccessfully to request that they not declare.
Just as he did for ten years as president of the Cabildo, and just as he tries to continue doing now, the only thing he wanted to be heard was “his truth”. The only thing he considered had to be told. What he keeps repeating like a mantra.
Pedro San Ginés can repeat to exhaustion all the requirements he had from the Government of the Canary Islands and the Deputy of the Common so that he would act in Montaña Roja. He can even take the Pope to testify at the next trial, even to confirm that what Club Lanzarote supplied was not holy water. But the question is whether someone told him that what he had to do was seize a private property of a company, without a court order and without any report to support it, to give it to another private company. There is no more, no matter how much he wants to turn it around. And that was one of the many things he lost the opportunity to clarify in the trial.
In its day, it will be the Court who judges and values that strategy, and who determines if the crimes are accredited or not. But for the moment, citizens do have the right and even the duty to know how the one who was the main public office of the island made decisions, who also aspires to be it again one day.
If San Ginés really insists that the statement of the former secretary “confirms” what he has been saying for years and what he said in the trial, this island has had an even more serious problem than we thought. If the one who was president of the Cabildo for ten years considers that to make a decision - which he himself described as “extraordinarily complex” and of “extraordinary depth” - not only did he not need prior written legal reports, but that a “improvised” and “informal” comment from the secretary was enough for him; if he really considers that that is a valid “verbal report”, few things even happened in that decade under his government.