The current councilor for Social Welfare and Sustainable Mobility in the La Laguna City Council, Rubens Ascanio, repeats for the third time as a United We Can candidate (a confluence of Sí se puede, IU and Podemos) for the mayoralty of the municipality in the next elections of the May 28. He makes a positive assessment of the mandate that is about to end, with a government pact between PSOE, Unidas se puede and Avante, and affirms that “we have shown that there is a program of progress for La Laguna that is fully viable”, showing himself open to the possibility of agreeing again with the PSOE in the next mandate.
-The confluence of Unidas se puede has re-elected you as a candidate, how do you face these elections after your first term in local government?
“With even more enthusiasm than the previous two because now it is not only the illusion that it is possible for the left to continue adding in the same direction, but also with all that credibility that four years give you, not only of opposition, which were intense , but four others from the government, in which we have shown that the proposals we made when we were in opposition are achievable, and that there is a program of progress and of the left for La Laguna that is fully viable”.
-You recently presented your list, what can you tell me about the team that accompanies you?
“It is a very young team, which has a lot of will and most of it comes with experience at both a political and institutional level, with colleagues from the current team in the Cabildo, as well as people who have been working in the City Council these four years, and people who join us in the candidacy to contribute to continue advancing in this policy of care, sustainability and equality ”.
-Do you think they will be able to repeat the good result of 2015 and 2019?
“Luckily, La Laguna is a municipality that is committed to progress, to ideas that are in perfect agreement with what United We Can represents. We have not been able to do more than a survey for almost a year and it already gave evidence that there was a very positive harmony of the population with respect to the actions that we were carrying out. I know that other parties have also carried out surveys in the same direction, and the sign is that there is a vast majority of progress in the municipality”.
-And do you consider that a government pact with the PSOE can be repeated in the next term?
“We have to build a project for a progressive municipality, based on proposals and programs. We have maintained an excellent relationship with the comrades of the Socialist Party, they have their own approach, different from ours in some aspects, but we have understood each other and I believe that this understanding can continue to be strengthened in the next four years. Our only red lines are those who want to agree with the extreme right or have a collusion with the corruption practices that we have suffered for so many years in the Canary Islands”.
-What balance do you make of these last four years?
“The balance we make is positive, not only the work we have done proves that we know how to manage and that we have been tough and mature, we have had a very complicated mandate but we have lived up to it, making an innovative municipality with all the that has to do with supporting small and medium businesses, in social accompaniment, the inclusion of people with disabilities, attention to the migrant population, becoming a benchmark even for the international organization of migrations. We have led the remunicipalization processes to recover public services that were privatized in the hands of companies and that are now managed by the City Council itself. What we have dedicated ourselves to, from the outset, is working to regularize and improve services, with City Hall staff who have done an exemplary job. And, in addition, we have opened more spaces for effective citizen participation than ever, developing all those municipal councils”.
-What objectives would remain pending for the next term if they were to be in the Government again?
“One of the great objectives is to complete everything that has to do with housing policy. In this mandate we have managed to recover the housing resource programs. And we are now with the rescue of an empty house and with the purchase of a house. And I hope that the new PGO contemplates a very notable increase in land intended for social protection housing or a guaranteed price for young people and families”.
-How do you assess the work of the parties that are currently in opposition?
“We have been able to see an opposition in which the main group has not presented a single amendment or alternative text to the budgets. They do not have a municipal alternative, their only alternative is to return, at whatever cost, using all the resources and, moreover, comfortably, while some were trying to use the courts to try to discourage the leftist electorate, when the policies that we are carrying out in this mandate are honest and dignified. And, at the same time, from the cowardice of expecting others to do the dirty work”.
