The Local Assembly of the PSOE of Arona, in the south of Tenerife, has put an end to the manager set up in the municipality two years ago and has unanimously re-elected the mayor José Julián Mena as general secretary.
The complaint filed by several councilors against the mayor of Arona, José Julián Mena, has been dismissed
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In this way, the already candidate for mayor of the municipality “has been adding, step by step, the victories that today have led him to recover the local leadership of the PSOE with the support of the militants, who have also given support to his proposal for a Local Executive Commission, which has obtained unanimous support”, informs the PSOE.
Mena was secretary general of the PSOE until August 2020, when he was dismissed after creating his party a manager in the municipality due to the internal crisis in the municipal group.
The current mayor of Arona was expelled from his party, but the courts annulled that decision and in September of this year he was proclaimed the PSOE candidate for mayor of the southern municipality.
With this assembly, the Management Commission appointed by the PSOE in August 2020 has ended and the ordinary organs of the party have been restored with the support of the militancy, adds the party.
In addition to the Municipal Executive Commission, the members of the Island Committee have been elected by Arona.
In August of this year, Mena won another judicial battle after the Investigating Court Number 4 of Arona dismissed provisionally the complaint presented against him by three fellow councilors of his party: Dácil León and Juan Sebastián Roque, and Luis García, who was expelled from the formation in 2020.
The order, to which this newspaper had access, established that both Mena and the municipal secretary, Pedro Javier Hernández, acted in accordance with the law at the request of these three councilors that the president go to the Non-Assigned Group after the PSOE opened an expulsion file for him. However, Mena appealed that expulsion in court and won, so he finally did not leave the party, but before the appeal was resolved, those three councilors asked Mena to go to the Non-Affiliated Group.
Faced with his refusal, the three councilors filed the complaint in January 2021 in which they accused both the mayor and the municipal secretary of prevaricating and committing fraud by law for their maintenance in the Socialist Group. They argued that the PSOE had expelled Mena and that it had also communicated it to the Arona City Council.
Reasons for expulsion and annulment
The PSOE initiated the expulsion of Mena, with an absolute majority in the municipality of Tenerife, arguing “repeated serious misconduct”, but the causes were not accredited, according to the sentence that later annulled it and sentenced the party to legal costs. In the sentence it was indicated that the only documentary evidence in the mayor’s expulsion file is news from the information media, news that “cannot be the only evidence to file a person, especially when it is not known what the source of the same”. Mena himself declared in watch me tv that she had been expelled “without arguments or reasons” and linked her to certain “business interests that have mobilized at all levels” to get her out of the City Council.
The start of the file took place after Mena dismissed his Town Planning councillor, Luis García (one of the complainants for not going to the Non-Assigned Group), pointing out that there were shadows of doubts regarding the construction of a shopping center on the coast of El Camisón, works that were denounced by the Prosecutor’s Office in April 2020. According to Mena, the councilor made decisions that were far from legal and his behavior “did not meet ethical standards.” García ended up being expelled from the PSOE at the same time as Mena, although his file did become firm.
In the case of Mena, in the disciplinary file, according to the sentence, there was a formal defect in the processing of the procedure that, although it is not in relation to the means through which communications are made (email and burofax ), it did affect the regulatory deadlines so that Mena could defend herself by presenting evidence. This meant, in the judge’s understanding, that Mena was made defenseless by preventing her from using the defense procedure provided for in the PSOE Regulations.
