Carlos Rojas, Mayor of Motril, has his sights set higher than the mayoralty of a coastal town; with the backing of his party he has forwarded candidacy to be Parliamentary Deputy for Granada in the Junta de Andalucia; in other words, an MP in the regional government in Sevilla.
As the new law recently brought into being by the Junta stipulates that you cannot simultaneously be a mayor and a parliamentary deputy – for very obvious reasons – this means that he will have to resign from the Motril mayoralty and a substitute found within his team.
Javier Arenas, who is the PP Candidate for First Minister (Presidente) in the upcoming regional elections on the 25th of March, places a lot of faith of Rojas to gain Granada for his party.
The Mayor of Motril is not the only PP mayor in Andalucia to do the same, as there are four others, which some see as a direct confrontation with the new law; a law that the PP is dead against… in Andalucia, at least, because in Galicia, where the PP control the regional parliament, they have no problems with it.
Indeed the PP who now control the Central Government have started legal proceedings to repeal the Andaluz law, so that their candidates can continue to be mayor’s as well.
Editorial comment: It is impossible that one person can efficiently occupy the post of mayor in a large town like Motril, with its 60,000 inhabitants, and at the same time efficiently fulfill their obligations as provincial deputy at the Junta de Andalucia. If a person can do both efficiently, then they are grossly overpaid for either post.
At a time when citizens are questioning the huge cost of maintaining the whole political infrastructure in Spain, with its overlapping areas of responsibility on a national, regional, provincial and municipal level, the very idea of politicians receiving two full salaries for posts that they are dedicating 50% of their time to, is abusive… and that is without even going into the high salaries received by politicians in general and the corresponding drain on public economic resources.
Although the motives behind the PSOE-run Junta’s decision to bring into being the new law are more politically motivated than for any other reason, it is indeed a very necessary law.
(News: Motril, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)