Sources within PSOE say that they are favourable to the request for President Armengol to appear before parliament in order explain measures contained in the decree on urgent planning measures which the government considers to be momentous and highly important.
The request has come from the Partido Popular, which is looking for the president to justify what it deems to have been a decree passed without having sought agreement which will affect some 15,000 jobs. PSOE spokesperson, Pilar Costa, is comparing this request with repeated ones that were made by PSOE for the former PP president, José Ramón Bauzá, to appear and explain measures his party had taken in government.
For Costa, the decree is one of the most important items of legislation to be adopted during the period of the current administration, and she is “profoundly satisfied” by its approval. “It is necessary to halt what, during the four years of the Bauzá administration, was a period when the PP was pursuing more land development than ever before.”
She has called on the PP to now drop a position that it has had for decades, which has been to make regulations that satisfy specific sectors. “And which encourage speculation and benefit special interests.”
The decree, insists Costa, had to be adopted in order to first stop the speculation that laws passed by the Bauzá government had permitted. With its approval there can be negotiation with the aim of establishing definitive regulations. Had the approach been taken in reverse, she maintains, it would have brought about a situation that no one would want.
“Once the decree is validated by parliament, a negotiating process can be opened during which we will all be able to debate calmly what future model we want for the islands and for the land.”
For another member of PSOE, Conxa Obrador, who is on the environment and land planning committee: “It is a convincing legislative action to protect land and also the Balearic economy, which is intimately linked to our environment.”