The island group Sí Podemos Canarias in the Cabildo de Tenerife has warned this Thursday about the possible rupture of the government pact that it has signed with the PSOE in the island corporation if the motion presented by Cs is approved in the ordinary plenary session this Friday to continue promoting the southern train, a project that for this group is a “red line that we are not willing to cross”.
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In this sense, Sí Podemos Canarias criticizes “the particular insistence of Vice President Enrique Arriaga with the train projects for the Island, being willing to create a possible crisis with the PSOE, which is his government partner, and opening the door to the political instability in this institution”.
Sí Podemos Canarias recalls that in the programmatic agreements signed with the PSOE at the beginning of the mandate, by those who supported the motion of censure to expel the Canary Coalition (CC) from power after more than 30 years in power, “the commitment was agreed with the non-start-up of the train projects in the south and north of the Island”. However, the insular group denounces that “Enrique Arriaga does not seem to care about the fulfillment of these agreements that allow there to be a government team between the PSOE and Cs supported by our group from the opposition, since we have reiterated on numerous occasions the red line that this measure represents for our group.
The political group values this as “a rupture of the commitments that have allowed him to be vice president of this corporation, something that speaks of the lack of scruples to betray the socialist party, with whom he has been governing, as well as his interest in continuing to become a place in island politics as of 2023, even though he has no party with which to continue his career”.
For Sí Podemos Canarias, it is evident that “vice president Arriaga continues to work to carry out CC projects, in this case one led by Ricardo Melchior during his time as head of the Cabildo, which is contradictory since Cs came to the island government with the promise to guarantee a change of political course for this Island, and finally its commitment to easy, continuous politics is being demonstrated, which also allows it to access the same patronage network based on the economic sectors that backed CC”.
The political group criticizes the recent statements by the representative of Cs in a media outlet informing that the Sustainable Mobility Plan in which the Cabildo continues to work contemplates the inclusion of the southern train. Sí Podemos Canarias reproaches that “Mr. Arriaga is making known the results and conclusions of the Insular Plan for Sustainable Mobility without the rest of the political forces having this information, especially when the development of this plan is an achievement of our political group in the Cabildo”. And right now “a citizen consultation is being carried out precisely on the Insular Plan for Sustainable Mobility of the Island, in which it is asked if the population considers that the train projects in Tenerife should be carried out”.
In this regard, the insular group highlights that “it seems that Mr. Arriaga is becoming an expert in paripés, using surveys even without waiting for them to end to justify his decisions taken unilaterally.” The opinion of the citizens of Tenerife, he adds, “is not important for those who manage the Mobility and Roads area in the institution, giving continuity to the forms of the most stale and old politics”.
Sí Podemos Canarias also criticizes that “it seems that the Cabildo could have saved both the Island Plan for Sustainable Mobility and this citizen survey, since it gives the feeling that Enrique Arriaga, as head of the Roads area, chooses to ignore the opinion of citizenship and does what it wants. All of this shows, Sí Popdemos insists, that the citizen consultation “is being carried out with a view to the gallery, with the intention of conveying to the population the false sensation that decisions on mobility take into account the opinion of the people of Tenerife and the people from Tenerife”.
The insular group points out the inconsistency of Cs in wanting to carry out “ultra-developmental macroprojects that involve destroying our fragile territory, with kilometers of expropriations, works and inconvenience for years, without previously betting on improving the bus service and other non-invasive measures, such as the development of the guagua-HOV lanes, since none have been established on the island and they want to build a train”. In addition, the insular group highlights that “there is no certainty that these trains could have a high occupancy, rather the opposite, especially if we had an efficient, cheap, punctual and reliable bus service.”
To conclude, Sí Podemos Canarias declares that “it is incomprehensible to invest more than 2,000 million in this infrastructure that will destroy our territory and whose maintenance will have to be paid for by the islanders, since it will not be able to maintain itself with the occupation that is foreseen”. “This is throwing public money from the European Union and the State into the same bag, mortgaging our future for the benefit of those who have shared the wealth on this Island and have contributed to making us the community with the highest poverty rate in the State” .
