As much as the nationalists of this land insist on beating their chests and pretending to champion a false patriotism dressed in populism and naming the Canary Islands in their acronyms, Ciudadanos (Cs) is the only party that values a true and legitimate Canarian agenda in these general elections in which Spaniards have our first appointment of the year with the polls. The purpose of the deputies and senators of Ciudadanos in the Canary Islands, who are as Canarian or more so than those of Coalición Canaria or Nueva Canarias, is to give politics an inclusive and broad approach that covers the needs of our land and that the Canary Islands are spoken of not only in the Parliament of the Canary Islands, but also in the Cortes Generales.
Although the Ciudadanos project starts from the state level, our formation is consistent with the demands of each autonomous community, province or island that it represents. The voice of the Canary Islands is not the one that carries the Canary Islands in its name, but that of those who really defend it.
In politics, the first thing is to fulfill the commitments made to the citizens, and in this case the parliamentarians of Coalición Canaria for Lanzarote have looked more at the interests and voting discipline of their party than at the true interests and needs of the citizens of the island whom they should represent and for whose defense they were elected at the polls.
What is the point of electing Canarian nationalist parliamentarians who, when the time comes, vote against improving the financing of Lanzarote's healthcare? Or that they leave Lanzarote and Fuerteventura out of the fuel bonus that the rest of the non-capital islands will enjoy? These are just two examples of the incongruity demonstrated by Coalición Canaria in this mandate with Lanzarote.
On April 28, the Canary Islands is gambling on a government that looks after the islands or one that turns its back on them, as the PSOE has been doing. Pedro Sánchez's party has not complied with the agreements signed and with those that should have been signed for the archipelago.
For its part, the Clavijo and CC Government still lacks the management capacity to invest many of the millions of euros it has received from Madrid. And as a culmination, we have the continuous non-compliance and neglect of PP and PSOE both in the issue of the Economic and Fiscal Regime of the Canary Islands (REF) and in the reform of regional financing.
On the contrary, Ciudadanos is the only national political formation that has presented up to 23 specific points in its national program for the Canary Islands. If there has been a party that has defended the islands in the Cortes Generales of Madrid in these last four years, that is Ciudadanos. Melisa Rodríguez and Saúl Ramírez, the two representatives that the party has in the Congress of Deputies for Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas and who are running again as candidates in these elections, have managed to get Ciudadanos to include an annex in its national program for the Canary Islands for the second time. A program made by and for the islands in which, among other measures, the defense of the REF is included, a project for the archipelago to become a hub for research and development of renewable energies and technology, and that the obligation to register the volume of waste, such as plastic packaging, that enters the archipelago is established.
We are committed to the defense of the Cabildos as a structuring element of the administration of the islands. We are going to get the extra cost, of approximately 16%, that Canarians bear in Education and Health services, as a result of the conditions of distance and insularity, to be recognized. Spaniards have to be equal, but that does not imply having the same financing, but having the same quality in public services. Something that until now, neither with CC, nor with the PP, nor with the PSOE, has happened in the Canary Islands.
In short, Ciudadanos is the party that cares most about the Canary Islands and the most capable of defending the population and the interests of the archipelago.
David Rodríguez is the Ciudadanos (Cs) candidate for the Cabildo of Lanzarote