A few weeks ago, the candidate for mayor of Arrecife for Coalición Canaria, Echedey Eugenio, published an article inviting the mayor Eva de Anta to debate with him and confront their models for Arrecife. Then he gave several interviews insisting on the same idea, even stating that:
"The people of Arrecife will have to choose in May between continuing with the current model represented by Eva de Anta and the PSOE or the proposal for change and new ideas that Coalición Canaria offers to our neighbors."
I don't know if this is going to be the strategy that Mr. Eugenio intends to follow throughout the campaign: trying to convince people that there are no more models or alternatives for Arrecife. CC or PSOE. PSOE or CC. If so, I foresee a poor result for whoever treats those they ask for votes with such disrespect.
Because it is undoubtedly a huge lack of respect to pretend that CC has nothing to do with the city we know today.
Our current Arrecife is the Arrecife of the PSOE, that's right. The one of José María Espino, Enrique Pérez Parrilla, José Montelongo and Eva de Anta. But it is also the Arrecife of Manuela Armas, Isabel Déniz and Manuel Fajardo Feo, all of them mayors of CC.
The two parties that have governed Arrecife the most are precisely CC and PSOE. And not a few years in company, as during this same legislature. Trying to sell to the citizens that one or the other represents some kind of change is a joke. And pretending that there are no more models, nor more alternatives than theirs, is like choosing between the bad and the worst.
Electoral dates are dates of conscious amnesia. Some and others pretend that we forget the past. That we do not remember their unfulfilled promises, their disastrous governments, their unjustifiable pacts or their cases of corruption.
But that's enough. This same legislature, from my seat in the opposition, I had to demand that councilors from Coalición Canaria resolve the very serious situation in which the kennel was found or that they fix the parks of the capital, completely deteriorated. That's just to give a couple of examples of issues that depended directly on their management. And now they intend to present themselves to the citizens as the change that this city needs? I really think it's outrageous.
Faced with these smoke sellers who will fill our streets with posters and our airwaves with the same promises as always, I demand memory. Memory and responsibility.
Let us remember, for example, the PP councilor that Dimas bought in 1995 so that his candidate for mayor, Cándido Armas, could take over the baton. Let us remember Isabel Déniz, who in the middle of the legislature left the PIL and moved to CC, destroying in connivance with the PSOE the Islas Canarias park that César Manrique had left us to turn it into the roof of a parking lot from which a few are now making enormous profits. Let us remember Operation Unión, which made it clear that for decades that City Council functioned like Ali Baba's cave, with everyone perfectly aware of that reality. Let us remember the PP candidate accompanying and defending José Manuel Soria while he was rebuked by citizens who indignantly reproached him for his agreements with Repsol.
I demand memory and responsibility. Because it is in our hands not to let these people continue to do whatever they want with the city, to the misfortune of the majority. The real change that our capital needs can only come from those who enter to govern free of debts and mortgages. But not only that. It also counts to have demonstrated some kind of commitment to improve the common space. Whoever was never interested in anything other than their own well-being, what guarantees does he offer that he will do something different when he assumes a public office, no matter how new he arrives?
What can be expected of someone who never went to a demonstration, nor cared about an eviction, nor knows more activism than sharing the odd meme on social media? I demand that there be activists in the institutions. Committed people who care about others and who have demonstrated it throughout their lives. In the campaign, many things are said and many others are promised. But it is the facts and actions that count, not the words. We cannot expect to achieve different results by always voting for the same people. Let's give ourselves an opportunity to do things differently. Let's say that it is possible to have people at the head of our community who have already demonstrated, through their life trajectory, that they care about the community and, ultimately, something more than improving their own quality of life. For there to be a real change, let's remember.
Leticia Padilla,candidate for mayor for Lanzarote en Pie - Sí Podemos
