Jerome Saavedra is angry about the treatment given to the former presidents of the Government of the Canary Islands . “Is there a Statute of Autonomy and why are former presidents forgotten?” He asks himself, and narrates his experience: he is the only former president who “has not missed a year” at the act of commemorating the canaries day and he has had to pay out of his pocket for plane rides to Tenerife, taxis, hotels… He has expressed the same thing on several occasions Lorenzo Olarteanother disgruntled former president.
“It is an undignified treatment that is given to the former presidents of the Government of the Canary Islands”, sentence Saavedra, who has also been a former minister, former mayor of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, former deputy of the Common and academic in Law. He doesn’t even have an assistant to move “his articles from him” because he is from “manuscripts,” he laments. Any.
And he points out that there are other former presidents who are having a hard time. His complaint is not new. Adam Martin (CC), who died in 2010, tried to regulate the condition of former presidents, recalls Saavedra, but it has never come to fruition, because it can give the impression that whoever does so intends to guarantee a lifetime salary for the future. Therefore, this matter has always remained in the air.
The Government of the Canary Islands has promoted a bill to establish the powers and duties of the Presidency, something that had not been done since 1983. He tried it in 2013 but was frustrated. This norm was the first and only one approved by the provisional Parliament of the eighties, and was determined by a projection of the results of the October 1982 general electionin which the autonomous deputies were appointed by agreement of the mixed assembly of parliamentarians-provincial inter-island associations in December 1982. Despite this, it has fulfilled during its prolonged validity “the mission that was entrusted to it, contributing to define and give continuity to the self-government bodies of the autonomous community”, exposes the bill that has reached Parliament from the Presidency.
One of its creators is Anthony Olivera, Vice President of the Presidency. It is in this text that the status of former presidents is discussed. According to Olivera, this bill arises as a consequence of the reform of the Statute of Autonomy of the Canary Islands, approved in 2018, and which has introduced different provisions that modify the configuration of both the Presidency and the Government of the Canary Islands, among which we must highlight the attribution to the president of the power of early dissolution of the Parliament of the Canary Islands or the possibility that the Government issues decree laws. Issues of the system of configuration, organization, attributions and operation of the Presidency and the Government of the Canary Islands that must be articulated in a legal regulation, he maintains.
And the second aspect is “the convenience of correcting at this precise moment the deficiencies, insufficiencies and shortcomings that have been revealed throughout the long period of validity of the 1983 Law, even though most have been overcome with an application of the conciliatory norm with the purposes of the Government’s action”, states the bill.
This new norm includes the statute of former presidents and, according to Olivera, the possibility of receiving a lifetime salary is not open. “It’s an absurd debate,” she maintains. And he specifies that the president Angel Victor Torres sHe has only been inclined to give aid to former presidents who advise the Government, but not a lifetime salary. In fact, he emphasizes that the Government is not going to get involved in this matter less than a year before the elections, and that if someone has to say something, it is the Canarian Parliament.
Misinterpretation of Torres
According to Olivera, perhaps Torres has been misunderstood. When he has said that former presidents should be paid it is not for his own future, he asserts. And he remarks: «Ángel Víctor Torres is a civil servant”, so he does not need, far from it, a lifetime salary of a former president when he leaves office.
In this way the Government of the Canary Islands wants to settle this matter. The bill that has been sent to Parliament, Olivera alleges, is also clear and does not change the status of former presidents. He says, like the previous text, that they will enjoy the following rights: treatment for life as president, a formal place in the official acts of the autonomous community; the support of the Government services in their displacements in the territory of the Canary Islands, as well as the assistance of the delegations abroad in their displacements outside the territory of the autonomous community; the use of the personal and material means that are determined and, finally, that the statute of the former presidents will be developed by regulation, where the incompatibilities regime will also be established. That is, his salary is at the expense of Parliament.
And what do the groups of the regional Chamber say? They practically agree that a lifetime salary cannot be given to former presidents and, above all, to those who are active as Roman Rodriguez (NC), Paulino Rivero and Fernando Clavijo (CC) or Torres himself (PSOE). Another issue is that the “experience” of former presidents such as Lorenzo Olarte and Manuel Hermoso (CC), Fernando Fernández (PP) or Jerónimo Saavedra (PSOE) and are compensated for their advice.
Jerónimo Saavedra states that in Valencia former presidents are paid for being part of the Advisory Council. He rejects a life salary but he does demand a “dignified” treatment for all those who contribute to advising the Government.
The ‘no’ of the groups
The majority of the groups in Parliament reject, therefore, the possibility of a lifetime salary for former presidents and less in the circumstances of current inflation and unemployment. The president of the PP, Manuel Dominguez, IIt indicates that they should be given “the recognition and respect of the canaries, but not their money.” “In the times we live in, there is no explanation for former presidents having a salary,” she says.
Casimir Curbelo, President of the Gomera Socialist Group (ASG) affirms that “it is about having a decent final life”. A different question is a salary, he thinks Luis Campos, from New Canary Islands, which sees it feasible to establish some compensation for advising the Government but, in no case, a remuneration for life, like CC. “Nothing implies a life annuity,” they argue from Canary Coalition, party that, like the rest of the groups in the Chamber, is assessing the bill for the Presidency of the Government and will present its amendments in this regard.
we can canaries is more restrictive. He rejects the collection of life salaries by former regional presidents and announces that the parliamentary group is already preparing an amendment to the Law of the Presidency and Government of the Canary Islands, whose process will end in December, to guarantee that regional legislation excludes such a possibility.
After the reopening of the debate on lifetime remuneration for former presidents, the general coordinator of the purple formation, Laura Fuentes, affirms that «political representatives have more than decent remuneration during the time that we have to exercise political responsibilities». “When the performance of these functions ends, no person who has exercised those responsibilities should receive privileges for having held public office,” he stresses.
