The Government of the Canary Islands, with its president at the helm, has celebrated, almost with fireworks, the information about Repsol's departure from the waters near the Canary Islands, where it was carrying out oil surveys. An attitude that is, to say the least, irresponsible. Irresponsible because it shows that they have not analyzed the seriousness of the situation, which is none other than the loss of an opportunity to diversify the economy of our Islands.
Irresponsible because they are once again using twisted arguments to deceive public opinion, as they have been doing with complete shamelessness. The English poet Alexander Pope said: He who tells a lie does not know what a task he has undertaken, because he will be obliged to invent twenty more to sustain the certainty of this first one. And this is what happens to the Government of all the Canarians, the lie is only sustained with more lies.
As much as I look at the coasts of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, I don't see oil on their shores, the desalinated water tastes the same as before the surveys, the tourists have not decreased, in fact, the number of passengers has grown. Where are the negative consequences that this Government of the Canary Islands has been talking about? Not one of the arguments put forward has materialized. Zero environmental impact.
Now, who is going to return to the Canarians the millions of euros spent by this regional government in its campaigns directed against oil? That is not talked about. If you have any dignity, gentlemen of this Government, you should return from your own pockets everything that you have stolen from the Canarians to carry out your own electoral campaigns.
I cannot overlook the insults that members of the Popular Party and myself have received from an advisor paid by CC and PSOE of the Cabildo of Fuerteventura to urge public opinion to attack us, even telling us to leave our own land. Another example of the frontal attack carried out by the parties that run the Government against democracy and pluralism.
In view of the above, it is legitimate for me to ask for the dissolution of the Office of Global Action of Lanzarote and, by extension, that of the Commissioner for the Development of Self-Government, whose sole function has been to work exclusively against the Popular Party.
All this chiringuito that they set up has been very good for many, but especially for this Government that with the carnival that they put together have had the golden justification to divert the attention of the citizens from the real problems of the Canary Islands.
But they have not realized the disservice they have done to the Islands! Their hullabaloo has been heard abroad, but they have not realized that large companies will think twice about the possibility of investing in our Islands!, and that dimension, you have not calibrated it.
While they have boasted of threatening with a consultation, with directed surveys, with disputing the decisions of the magistrates, commissioning studies, paying for marches and meetings, trips with no purpose, with misleading advertising, and even creating alarm and sowing fear.
Now they have no justification. The right thing to do would be to start investing the same effort and the same money in the attention in the emergencies, the images of people in the corridors of the hospitals are degrading and are the responsibility of this Government; that they start working for the people without resources, so that they can have a decent roof; that their advisors work to find sources for the creation of employment and many more problems. The excuses for this Government are over, but of course, now it turns out that its main leaders are seeing the exit sign and they care little about what happens to the Canarians. They don't even remember that in the coasts of our neighbor, Morocco, the prospecting does continue forward.
Sincerely, the balance of this regional government is very poor, irresponsible, obscure in its intentions, and even undemocratic and will go down in history as one of the blackest for the Canarian society. But I assure you that from the Popular Party we are going to continue working in the search for new resources and exits for our people because responsibility and democracy are our distinctive signs.
Astrid Pérez Batista, President of the Popular Party of Lanzarote