Mayor Jaume Collboni’s government yesterday accused the opposition groups of slowing down citizen participation, of rejecting the municipal action plan (PAM) for not having to debate it, of torpedoing the work of the Consistory for vested interests partisans…
As expected, the opposition groups fell in the Presidency commission and the first change was the PAM presented this Monday by the deputy mayor of Urbanism, the socialist Laia Bonet. Together, the PP and Vox voted against it. BComú and ERC preferred to abstain. The abrupt end of this procedure has no legal significance. However, it is not futile. We are in the most theatrical plane of politics, in that of mutual attrition and the search for psychological advantages.
Each in their own way and with a different level of drama, the spokesmen of the opposition emphasized that the socialist executive had presented his road map for the rest of the mandate late and badly, and that he had done so without holding any meeting, without trying to get their complicity, without sending them a single WhatsApp message. In reality, the discussion surrounding the initial approval of the symbolic PAM was nothing more than an excuse for everyone to speak their minds again.
Xavier Trias, the winner of the last elections, burst into the debate in an unexpected way, in the turn of the reply, scratching a few seconds from his councilor Victòria Alsina, to remind the socialists “we are where we are because you wanted it that way . They didn’t want to come to any agreement with us and now they don’t even call us to talk about the PAM. Reflect”. Yes, the people of Junts still grieve that Collboni snatched the mayorship from them at the last moment, and also that the executive was not shared afterwards. The popular Daniel Sirera, for his part, could not contain himself and described the socialist PAM as a “pamphlet”.
The PSC’s counterattack, however, was designed before the groups decided they would not support their roadmap. In fact, on Monday, in the presentation of the document, the deputy mayor Bonet advanced that the then still hypothetical rejection in this initial procedure would not alter the government measures of the socialist executive, that its main consequence would be to slow down the celebration of a citizen participation process intended for residents to finish profiling this guide for the next three years.
And yesterday, in the heat of the exchange of reproaches, Deputy Mayor Bonet insisted on this point. “We are presenting this PAM now because we will soon have budgets and we want to give the public a voice as soon as possible – said Bonet-. It is a realistic and ambitious road map intended to lead the transformation of the city. It is not the first time that a minority government presents a PAM. Both Trias and Colau did so, and then the PSC facilitated the initial processing to give citizens a voice. The only thing we wanted to ask of them was to facilitate the debate, to allow the public to speak”. And to emphasize the importance of this participation process that will no longer take place, the deputy mayor said that they were prepared to extend it for another month, so that it would last up to three. But since the opposition stubbornly stopped everything…
Those from BComú and ERC saw the telegraphed socialist invitation coming and opted for abstention. However, both regretted that the municipal government had not even sent them a WhatsApp message.
