SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Nov. 8 (EUROPE PRESS) –
The former president of the Government of the Canary Islands, Jerónimo Saavedra, urged public administrations on Tuesday to be “more efficient” in their management and to put an end to the “extra powers” of some officials who “are paralyzing” management.
In a conference given in the Parliament of the Canary Islands on the occasion of the ‘Conference on the Autonomy of the Canary Islands in front of the mirror on its 40th anniversary: challenges and challenges’, he lamented that there are “political leaders incapable of saying that they have the authority” to impose their criteria after being democratically elected.
Saavedra believes that this issue must be “seriously addressed” because there are four administrations in the Canary Islands — Central Government, Canarian, councils and town councils — and he understands that either a “clear delegation structure” is designed or the “problem” that It has happened with the dependency, for example, where “money is being lost” from the central government because the powers are not clear, in the case of home help provided by the municipalities.
He recalled the “problems” for the “construction” of autonomy in 1982, since the Canary Islands “was one of the most backward regions from an economic and social point of view”, with the highest rate of illiteracy after Extremadura and an economy led by the primary sector, with an industry that did not reach 20% of GDP and a service economy that was still developing.
In this context, he has indicated that “it was a risk to assume powers, pure utopia” because the State financing system “was for effective cost” and did not include “new peseta” for investment, it only covered current expenses and workforce.
Along these lines, he has said that “it was a risky political decision” in the midst of a labor crisis linked to the closure of tobacco industries and with schools that were used “in three shifts” and with teachers “with double shifts.”
He stressed that they managed to attract officials from the associations “with a very high level” and that they gave “confidence” to politicians at the “starting point” of autonomy, even winning lawsuits against the State, while some taxes were set to finance the new powers.
Saavedra, who was president of the Junta de Canarias in 1982 and 1983, has pointed out that the archipelago “did not have an autonomous vocation” beyond some groups that had that vision during the underground but “it was a solitary voice”.
“UCD SWEEP”
He has underlined that the social movements of the time were limited to the conflicts in the buses in Tenerife, the repression in Sardina (Gran Canaria) or the revolts of the tomato sharecroppers and the lack of an autonomous vision “was palpable” with the results of the General Elections of 1977, with a “sweep of the UCD” that showed that “the sentiments of the common canary were not for autonomy”, something that has been blamed on the insular dispute and “not seeing anything other than the Cabildo”, which had State resources via REF and excise taxes, and it was “the maximum” that was aspired to in island politics.
For this reason, he has confessed “astonished” that sometimes a “radical or almost independentist nationalism” arises when in those first years of autonomy there were difficulties in carrying out a Canary Islands anthem or institutional campaigns were carried out to promote Canarianism.
He has also indicated that the first Statute took time to approve the “lawsuits” with the lobbyists “and within the UCD itself” and pointed out the difficulties that there were also to fit the Canary Islands into the EU. “We wanted to put on the same jacket but the other way around,” he recalled
