04 Jan No way!
Font: Tribuna Libre
It is curious how easy it is for professional politicians to change their tone when crosswinds come and do not favour their path. If my party collapses in the regional elections of the South of Spain, it doesn’t matter. I just restrain myself from being the protagonist of my own elections and I start giving money to locals and outsiders. It is just virtual and theoretical, but that is the one that is better distributed on these occasions.
Not even 48 hours have gone by since Susana Díaz’s political corpse has foregrounded Ximo Puig’s aspirations. Our very honorable man has dusted off the Plan against the Financial Exclusion of the small municipalities of the Valencian Community. He, as Mr. Marshall did, will make a tour around the municipalities, bringing –once again- the money back to more than 250 Valencian cities that had run out of liquidity, thanks to the bank restructuring and the cheek of many politicians.
There isn’t a better Plan that the virtual one, which is not included in the budgets of the Generalitat Valenciana and doesn’t even have a bidding process. Not a better announcement could be made. If it has to be put into practice, it is another 5 million Euros that we can’t even take from anywhere, but that would be added to the fair funding list and in charge of illusive incomes of the autonomous budgets.
The star proposal of the Plan against the Financial Exclusion of the small municipalities of the Valencian Community consists of installing an ATM (cash dispenser) in each of those municipalities that lack of a bank office. So far, there is no objection. The measure is needed if the the economic activity in these municipalities wants to be maintained.
If the numbers of the Consell and the Valencia Institute of Economic Research are exact, the branch network in the Valencian Community has fallen by 48% since 2008. This shift has caused that in 2017 the number of those Valencians that live in municipalities where there is no bank branch, that is, 248 municipalities, has increased a 13%.
For now, as Puig said, there are more than 95 municipalities which are interested in having, at least, one ATM in their territory, at an estimated maintenance and operating cost of 10000 Euros a year each. Consequently, before the project has started, it is already foreseen an annual investment of more than one million Euros in a presupposed five-year plan. There are still 150 municipalities that haven’t voted, so they can start doing numbers.
No one can doubt Ximo Puig’s capacity to survive. To rise from the ashes of a PSPV beaten to death during the golden age of the populists is at the level of those plumbers that know all about of those around them. Now, after accomplishing his dream of being the President, and far from becoming a minister, he wants to enjoy it in a legislature for the greater glory of his posterity. And all of this without the shadow that accompanies him everywhere, having a Marxist intellectual aspect and the dagger drawn waiting to cut the hair of whoever happens to cross his path to the presidential seat.
This plan, announced with much fanfare, seems to be a pre-electoral proposal of the President of the Generalitat rather than a short-term reality. In other words, Puig has already begun his particular pre-campaign in the face of the possible definitive cracking of the Pacto del Botánico, encouraged by the weakening of the Socialist position in autonomies like Andalusia.
Puig is an old hand in politics and, as he well knows, it’s time to start giving out money, or machines that dispense the money, although it’s the citizens’ own money. What better way to avoid the announced calling of elections in advance in the image of Andalusia. Now we just have to wait for the next announcement. The only thing that is clear is that it won’t be the announcement of the Valencian autonomous elections. No way.