The socialist municipal group in Orihuela has criticised the PP Mayor Pepe Vegara ‘s decision to limit access to the municipal registry to two days a week and having to request in writing the list of records that want to be reviewed from the Mayor’s Office for the information that is to be consulted.
This decision has been harshly questioned by the socialists who consider “access to the registry an essential task for accountability in public management, limiting access to municipal information to Mondays and Fridays is a strategy of Mr. Vegara whose only objective to hinder the functions of the opposition so that the Oriolanos do not find out about the management of their government,” says socialist spokesperson Carolina Gracia.
The PSOE spokesperson has pointed out “the use of data protection as an excuse to limit transparency is a very opportunistic strategy on the part of Mr. Vegara, who faces growing pressure to answer for his political decisions. This is a cowardly decision, first they eliminated us from the governing boards, they don’t share our invoices either and now they limit our access to information to certain days, we must be doing something right so that Mr. Vegara tries to hinder our work, he is finally showing his true nature. Not only did he lie to the Oriolanos with his legal cases, but now he wants no one to find out what he does and does not do at the Town Hall.”
Gracia explained that “we believe that Vegara’s zeal for our work has clouded his mind, it is ridiculous that he now wants to supervise our work, since he forces us to send him a list of records and after seeing them he will give us access, perhaps that is how he find out everything that has passed before you until now and you have not seen.
According to the socialists, “transparency and access to information are fundamental pillars of democracy but with the new information restriction policy, access to key details about contracts, administrative decisions and public expenditure will be considerably more difficult.” The socialist group will send a request to the Ombudsman to intervene in this matter to reverse these restrictions and to guarantee public access to information about the management.
