These days there is a lot of political debate, after all there are only a few hours left for the General Elections in Spain, that distant Spain or perhaps rather those two Spains that seem to have returned after a long time.
Debate after debate at the state level only gives us one message;
Either you are one of us or you are one of them, there is nothing else at the bottom of the debate, they talk to us about reds, purples, blues or greens…
Of communists or Francoist fascists.
Some tell us that we are going to end up worse than ill-fated countries like Venezuela in the hands of a radical socialism and, the others, that we prepare the new shirt to sing facing the sun and that our grandmothers, mothers, daughters and nieces will be unprotected against the scourge of violence against women.
They even imply that they are going to recover the law of vagrants and criminals against people with different sexual identities.
And so they spend the campaign time, engrossed in scaring us with the other and not in serious proposals of how we are going to have a stronger Spain. Zero proposals and thousands of fears from one side or the other.
And then there is Lanzarote, where there seem to be no serious problems such as water, housing or public transport. Here the debate is about salaries; those of some and those of others.
I do not defend the salary of the president of the Cabildo, although it is legitimate and similar to the rest of the councils, nor do I defend the rest of the increases of each and every one of the mayors of this island.
In moments where in Lanzarote the average salary is between 15 and 23 thousand euros, this issue gives a lot to talk about to our citizens, to whom we owe respect.
Days talking about the president's salary, reproaching his decision, to the point that, for the first time, a survey is done for people to give their opinion within margins that are outside the average salaries of most of us. And that makes us angry, but not because of the amount. Do not be confused.
It angers us because of the experience and perception that many of us already have that even if they only charged one euro it would be too much for what is done or has been done in recent years.
Especially the last four, which have only been years without management, focused on undoing what has already been done and saying how bad the previous managers were. Very similar to the State debate.
I am not good, but the other is worse
That is the policy in which the great political forces of this country have been established, PSOE, SUMAR, PP and VOX, who tell us that when voting we should not vote for the best but for the least bad.
So much has been the demagoguery, that the former president enters the political debate with an opinion article where to increase the anger of the citizens of Lanzarote comes to tell us that the president of the Cabildo is going to charge more than the president of Spain, ignoring in his favor that Mr. Sánchez while he is president has a house with everything included in addition to vacations in Lanzarote at the expense of all of us and a timple as a gift that we also pay for, of course.
But he forgets to tell us that Spain has a lifetime salary for the president for the rest of his life in the pure style of Nescafé salaries. The worst thing is that, while the PSOE of María Dolores Corujo says how indecent the president's salary is, he says nothing about the fact that the PSOE councillors are going to renounce the proposed increase aimed at them. Nothing more and nothing less than 70 thousand euros for doing opposition.
He simply limits himself to justifying the increases of his mayors to the maximum allowed by law, with the allegation that they have raised it, but that the president raised it more. If political demagoguery is bad when talking about salaries, worse are the excuses to raise it. And here I go to Tías.
My mayor, although not because I wanted it, holds a plenary session and raises his salary to the maximum possible, an increase of about 9,000 euros per year. And two weeks later he convenes another plenary session for another increase. Not for him since he cannot charge a penny more, but for the rest of his councillors.
And here comes the best excuse we have heard these days:
His first deputy mayor says that they raise their salary because Intervention and Human Resources asked them to raise it. That is a good reason!
But, as if that were not enough, eleven councillors and seven advisory positions also appear overnight, three more than just a year ago.
In total, in Tías there will be 18 people with public salaries and all well above the average of what most of the population earns.
To top it off, they are not advisors with a professional profile that help with management, but relatives of one party and another, with the exception of the head of press of the City Council, or rather of the government group, who is professional and very necessary and therefore there is nothing to object.
Gone is that PODEMOS that said that advisors should not exist while it was in the opposition and that now will have two advisors for these four years, or that PSOE that one day came to look the workers in the face until it realized that with bread and circus they could live off the effort of the same.
But as they say, they are the party of the disadvantaged; therefore, their only reason is that we are a poor country.
This Sunday are the General Elections and if I have been clear about something since 1995, when I voted for the first time, it is that Coalición Canaria must be in Madrid so that we are respected as islands.
With the debates it has become clear to us that no one else has talked to us about the real problems of this country and much less of the Canary Islands where there seems to be no problems with water, housing, immigration, or with the fishing fleet, etc.
After all, to talk about the Canary Islands you need to have the freedom to raise your hand and raise your voice when it is time.
And perhaps that is why it is understood that the PSOE candidate for our province is the former president of the Cabildo who has the honor of being the Canary Island deputy with the least work done in the Parliament of the Canary Islands so as not to bother her president and that is why they noticed her, so that when she is in Madrid more than representing us she will be there to raise her hand when they tell her, neither before nor after, but when they tell her.
You remember: in these elections we do not vote for Sánchez, Feijó, Abascal or Yolanda Díaz. Here we must choose the people in charge of taking our voice to Madrid.
As a socialist friend told me the other day, in these elections he will not vote with his heart but with his head and therefore he will vote for nationalism no matter how much it hurts because he recognizes that being a socialist he has only heard Ana Oramas or María Fernández talk about the Canary Islands year after year.
Amado Vizcaíno. Spokesman for Coalición Canaria in the Tías City Council.
