Before the upcoming elections, there are many proposals that are not really proposals. They are generic objectives: goals to be achieved rather than actions to be taken. Sugar cubes that dissolve as soon as they are passed through clean, transparent water. They are neither verifiable nor contrastable.
These grand objectives almost always follow this rule: they are higher the less likely the proposer is to govern. Or the more inexperienced they are in matters of government. Or the less aware they are of that old warning of popular wisdom: "It is not the same to preach as to distribute the wheat."
Today I want to talk to you about an initiative that is transversal to all, absolutely all policies, such as transparency in accountability.
And, pay attention, I am talking to you today not to promise you anything new. Nothing new. Nothing that we have not already done at the local level in the City Council of La Laguna: where we have come to be among the best in Spain and to be the first in the Canary Islands.
That is why I am not telling you a new promise: it is an action fulfilled; and fulfilled soon. I do not have to say what we will do in transparency because we have already done it, we have demonstrated it and they have examined it.
The two major recent evaluations on local transparency made in the Canary Islands institutions by Transparency International and Infoparticipa have unanimously agreed to place La Laguna always at the head of the Canary Islands. The first was done in the second half of 2014 throughout Spain. The second, last month in the Canary Islands. They are verifiable on their websites and in the information media.
No one can deny that the two evaluations are a firm guarantee of the present to our future project.
We gave priority to improving the information system on our municipal website and its transparency portal. And we were completely up to date more than a year before the state law required it.
These are verifiable, verifiable and already verified facts by independent evaluators, with demonstrated international experience in one case. They are not simple siren songs.
To get there, we were encouraged by a moral duty before a legal obligation; which in reality we did not have to fulfill until after the elections. A duty that would contribute to accredit and reinforce the confidence that citizens have maintained in Coalición Canaria de La Laguna for 16 years. And that is proof that we can extend that clean and clear way of working to the entire Canary Islands, after the pilot experience that we have consolidated emphatically in Aguere, as well as in Santa Cruz and in the Cabildo, also a reference of good work in this field.
With those precedents, and with the new Transparency Law that the Canary Islands adopted last December, we do not need to look anywhere else to know that we have the necessary tools and will to be a reference in terms of accountability in Spain and in Europe. We promise and I commit because I have previously rendered accounts. I do not announce in a vacuum or invent things that stubborn reality will deny me.
I can say with a certain pride that we have rendered information, data and accounts in La Laguna like no one else in the Canary Islands and like few in Spain, although there is still work to be done and to advance. It is a good base accredited by independent third parties as realistic. And we come out unscathed like no one else from that test, from that exam.
When in a few days we submit to the scrutiny of all citizens, it is good that they know that. And that they take it into account. And that they tell those who look at reality without prejudice, with an open mind and eyes willing to believe things when a demonstrated transparency is used. That is why we can say that we will not do it (in the future). That is why we can say that, in terms of transparency, we will continue to do so. From here on out. And always.
Fernando Clavijo, candidate of Coalición Canaria to the Presidency of the Government of the Canary Islands