Coalición Canaria (CC) has condemned the complaint filed by María Dolores Corujo, the Secretary General of the Socialist Party (PSOE) in Lanzarote, as “an outright display of political dishonesty and audacity.” Corujo, who is also the current councillor of the Cabildo and a member of Congress, has alleged misconduct against the President of the institution, Oswaldo Betancort, “for questioning a simple change of the dates for Cabildo meetings, when she herself, as President, flagrantly violated the law by failing to hold at least more than ten ordinary sessions,” stated Pedro San Ginés, the island secretary of the nationalist party.

San Ginés emphasised that the “height of political cynicism is that Corujo herself violated what she now denounces, as between June 2019 and April 2022, she held only five ordinary plenary sessions on the dates specified by the Cabildo’s Organic Regulation, specifically the last Friday of each month.” (*A document detailing the plenary sessions during that period is attached).

Corujo Failed to Hold at Least More Than Ten Ordinary Sessions

Pedro San Ginés highlighted that the PSOE cannot offer lessons of any kind when Corujo has committed far more serious violations. During the spokesperson meeting on 24 February 2023, the then Secretary General of the Plenary reported and requested it be recorded that “eleven plenary sessions remain to be held and, by the end of February, twelve, all without taking into account those suspended due to the pandemic.”

San Ginés further noted that “not only did she skip the celebration of ordinary plenary sessions, but in four years of her mandate, she held only one State of the Island Debate, in 2022, once again violating the Organic Regulation of the Cabildo, which requires it to be convened annually.”

Plenary Agreements with Illegally Purchased Majority

The island secretary of CC also recalled that Corujo “not only committed these breaches of the Regulation, but for three years she governed in a minority, supported by a defector, Juan Manuel Sosa, who was bought with public funds from the Government of the Canary Islands, which he will now have to repay, along with legal costs for appealing the repayment in an attempt to refuse to return it. Dolores Corujo would do well to remain silent regarding her own history of breaches and illegalities.”

Initiatives: The Contrast of Inactivity

San Ginés underscored that Corujo “was the president who most flouted the rules, in a much more serious manner, although it is worth noting this was not due to an excess of work; she was the most inactive, to put it mildly, both as President of the Cabildo and as a member of the Canary Islands Parliament, and she continues to be as a Congress member.”

CC highlights the “alarming lack of effort and political work” from Dolores Corujo. During her time as Mayor of San Bartolomé and as a parliamentarian (2015-2019), she presented merely 108 initiatives in the Canary Islands Parliament, compared to Oswaldo Betancort’s 339 while serving as Mayor of Teguise and also as a member of the Canary Islands Parliament (2019-2023), with both having held the same positions.

Furthermore, in the first two years of the current legislative session, Oswaldo Betancort has already presented 87 initiatives in the Canary Islands Parliament, balancing this work with the Presidency of the Cabildo, while Corujo only presented 14 during the four years of the previous legislature, being, like Betancort currently, both the president of the first insular corporation and a member of the Canary Islands Parliament.

“Moreover, despite not holding any island or regional government position at present, she has only put forward 23 initiatives in Congress, compared to the 261 from Congress member Cristina Valido and the 132 submitted by Pedro San Ginés in the Senate,” they pointed out.

The Dual Parliamentary Role

Meanwhile, CC spokesperson in the Cabildo, Samuel Martín, points out that the President of the Cabildo, Oswaldo Betancort, also holds a dual parliamentary role, just like the PSOE congresswoman and councillor of the primary insular institution. It is therefore logical for plenaries to be scheduled according to the parliamentary agenda of the Cabildo President, who holds the highest insular representation. “In any case, the PSOE congresswoman in Madrid can choose: to be present in the plenaries of the Cabildo of Lanzarote representing the interests of Lanzarote and La Graciosa, or to follow the dictates of Sánchez in Madrid. She must decide what is more important for her: whether Madrid or Lanzarote,” Martín asserts.

Legal Actions Against Corujo

On another note, San Ginés affirms that CC “never intended to judicialise this institutional illegality to avoid further poisoning the political debate, but following Corujo’s hypocritical complaint, CC reserves the right to take any legal actions we deem appropriate.”

He reiterates that “Dolores Corujo systematically did precisely what she now denounces by invoking the regulations and plenary agreements regarding the scheduling of plenars, which she so often neglected, but something far more egregious: the non-celebration of over ten plenary sessions, flagrant violations of the law and a distortion of democratic norms. If we are to take legal action, what she did does not have a statute of limitations, and it is certainly infinitely more serious than merely rescheduling a session to fit the parliamentary calendar of the Cabildo President, as she often did herself,” he concludes.