Political parties and unions are excluded from all contract tables of the Torrent City Council, the body that analyzes and decides on public awards and selection processes of the municipality and that will be composed entirely of technicians and chaired by a PP councilor. Popular mayor Amparo Folgado defends that “it is not a decision of the mayor”, but what they have applied is a report from the Secretariat, which highlighted the “technicization” of this body because it is the spirit of the legislator of the Public Sector Contract Law. This substantial change comes after the controversial hiring of the municipality’s press office, won by La 8 TV Mediterráneo, and that even its partners from Vox have questioned.
Folgado explained to elDiario.es that political groups “will be invited, the doors are not closed to anyone”, and at the same time he assures that there is no political intention because “even I am not at the table”. Folgado added that this change aims to “professionalize and modernize it” and that, in addition, the number of its components is reduced.
The final objective, according to Folgado, is to “gain speed, transparency and technical evaluation at the highest level.” “We want the work to be done by professionals.” “This measure was already applied by the municipality during the previous phase of the PP government – with the current mayor of València María José Catalá -, and it is also applied by the socialist municipalities,” he concluded.
“They took the path that interests them most”
The municipal opposition does not consider this change in the composition of the procurement committee to be a good intention and alludes to political interests.
The spokesman for the PSPV, Andrés Campos -precisely the former president of the hiring table-, recalls that “the law allows a range of possibilities, because they could also have put a technician as president, but they put the councilor, so “The PP will be the only party that will have a representative. The spokesman for Compromís-Podem-EUPV, Xavier Martí, insisted on this aspect, warning that “they have chosen the device path that interests them the most.”
The socialist recalled, regarding the professionalization and technicization defended by Mayor Folgado, that “when politicians are part of the table, we do not make a scale or score, we only vote at the end and we monitor, and now this monitoring will be lost.” Campos affirms that with the figure of the guest of the political parties “they will not have all the information.”
For his part, Xavier Martí recalls that the PP’s government partner, the far-right Vox, denounced the lack of transparency and the use of “shortcuts” in the hiring of the Bishops’ Television for the municipal press office of Torrent, “But now they accept it. Martí suggests: “I don’t know if, with this silence, they want to use this issue to negotiate internally with the PP the municipal budgets.” Martí emphasizes that by being part of the municipal government, “they can obtain information about the contracts unofficially.”
