Recently in Lanzarote there have been two demonstrations that both their organizers and the media have surrounded with an aura of success. I am referring to the demonstration against oil exploration and the ...
Recently in Lanzarote there have been two demonstrations that both their organizers and the media have surrounded with an aura of success. I am referring to the demonstration against oil exploration and the demonstration against labor reform.
I feel morally obligated to write this article because I reject the idea that a lie repeated 1,000 times becomes the truth. And, in this case, the lie that both demonstrations were a success has been repeated too many times.
As an initial point, I affirm that the individual intentions of each and every one of the demonstrators in both demonstrations were absolutely respectable. Therefore, and wishing that this axiom from which I start is kept very present, I reiterate my sincere respect to the participants of the two events.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, I also affirm that the two demonstrations have resulted in a clear failure. One thing was the respectable individual intentions of the demonstrators and another very different thing is that they have achieved their objective (success) by demonstrating, which they have not achieved at all.
Every demonstration has as a reference of success or failure the number of demonstrators. Taking as a reference the capital of our country, in Madrid any demonstration that aspires to be transcendental or historical is a failure if it does not reach one million. In good logic, that figure transferred to Lanzarote implies that a demonstration of less than 50,000 people could not aspire to be either transcendental or historical.
The demonstration against oil exploration had 9,000 demonstrators. That puts it at a paltry 18 percent of the supposed success. As for the demonstration against the labor reform, the data is reduced to exactly one third. That is, the support of the conejeros to the NO to the labor reform has remained at a tiny 6 percent of the supposed success.
I suppose that no one will question the reliability of the official data on the number of demonstrators. But in case there is someone, it should be remembered that the official and exclusive competence on authorizations for demonstration lies with the Government Delegations, as well as that of providing official participation data through the analysis carried out by the National Police. We democrats who respect the competential system that we have given ourselves owe ourselves to these data.
Anyone who denied these data would automatically be placed in the field of subjective speculation, since just as the organizers tend to give inflated figures, there are surely those who minimize them.
In any case and in summary, the two demonstrations in Lanzarote have been a resounding failure as they have remained at 18 percent and 6 percent respectively of the supposed success estimated at 33 percent of the total population, or what is the same, 50,000 people. It can be objectively affirmed that the people of Lanzarote have turned their backs on the two calls: to oppose the explorations and to condemn the labor reform.
In other words, the vast majority of the citizens of Lanzarote support both oil exploration and labor reform. And this support is intimately related, without a doubt, to the victory in Lanzarote of the Popular Party in the last general elections.
Sigfrid Soria (National Board of the Popular Party)