15,000 MARCH AGAINST COUNCIL 'CORRUPTION'

Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Saturday January 9 2010

UP TO 15,000 residents marched through the regional capital on Saturday against the council's Plan General de Ordenación (PGO).

by JAMES TWEEDIE

Furious chicharreros – Santa Cruz residents – blew whistles and horns and shouted slogans against the planning by-law, which had put some 30 per cent of the city's buildings out of planning permission.

The demonstration dwarfed that outside the preceeding Monday's stormy town hall meeting where the ruling Canarian Coalicion (CC) – Popular Party (PP) alliance and the Canarian Nationalist Centre (CCN) passed the PGO against belated opposition form the Socialist Party (PSOE).

Protest leaders accused councillors of lying, corruption and theft, arguing that the PGO only served the interests of local property speculators.

The campaigners named businessmen Antonio Plascencia, Manuel Hermoso, former Tenerife cabildo president Adam Martín and Ignacio González Martín, father of CCN president and Santa Cruz councillor Ignacio González Santiago.

Assembly for Tenerife (AxT) member Candido Quintana said: “This is the death of the Canarian Coalition.

“Of course they will suffer in the elections next year. The people will vote for the parties who defend their interests.”

The protesters gathered in Candelaria Square by the city docks before marching on the town hall, chanting: “Corruption Coalition”, “Hands up! This is a robbery!” and “we're going to stop this plan”.

Neither CC mayor Miguel Zerolo, councillor for urbanism and housing Luz Reverón González or PP group leader Ángel Llanos were there to meet the demonstrators.

Speakers used the back of a pick-up truck as a makeshift platform to address the crowds in front of the town hall.

Toscal neighbourhood Platform Against The PGO spokesman José Antonio Ramos described the PGO as “the greatest robbery in the history of Tenerife.”

AxT leader Ana Caballero said: “Miguel Zerolo and his friends – Ángel Llanos and Ignacio González Santiago – will take the only thing Plasencia, Hermoso, Ignacio González senior, Adam Martin and the rest of the group can give them – money. The people are hitting them where it hurts most – in power, in votes.”

Several PSOE councillors turned out to support the protest, including group spokesman José Ángel Martín Bethencourt.

He said that the CC and PP had made the wrong decision in pressing ahead with the PGO in the face of public opposition.

“If you listen to the people here you will have the solution to the problem,” he said. “But the government of Santa Cruz does not want to listen to anybody.”

Mr Martín pointed out that the PGO must now be approved by the Canarian regional ministry of the environment and planning (COTMAC).

He said: “We have three ways to go. The first a petition to COTMAC. The second is in the courts of justice. The third is in the street.”

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