To audit what has been audited
The Council of Mallorca has on its table a report from the General Intervention, the highest auditing body of the institution. It uncovers a presumed unjust enrichment of 41.4 million euros by Tirme, the waste concessionaire. Faced with the financial scandal, the response of the Galmés government has been to announce a new audit that is “more extensive and more powerful”.
What is a “more powerful” audit when the previous one has already been drafted by the elite civil servants of the same institution? In the political dictionary, ‘powerful’ simply means buying time at the expense of public money; putting a tender out for bid and sitting back waiting for an external company to come and audit what has already been audited.
The maneuver is a humiliation and an absolute disregard for the institution's technicians. If the criteria of the General Intervention are not useful for making decisions, should we from now on distrust any conclusion from high-ranking officials? Does the administration not have legal tools to secure its steps?
The Minister of Finance, Rafael Bosch, has rushed to warn that “going to the courts is dangerous”. It is not if you do your job, defend the general interest, and rely on the legal guarantees offered by the Council itself. But paralysis by analysis is the hallmark of the house. We do not need a new report to eclipse the previous one, in the same way that more load studies on the roads were not needed, nor was a Pact for sustainability needed in the Government –stillborn and designed to freeze the clock– to conclude that overtourism destroys the quality of life.
We need solutions based on legal certainty to act with speed, not a bureaucratic blanket to cover inaction. This reverential fear and misunderstood prudence disappear when it comes to governing by decree, sneaking measures into Frankenstein laws or entrusting the management of the territory to simple responsible declarations.
Governors and the opposition should stop throwing reports at each other in the plenary session as if they were hand grenades to cover up the fact that some kept papers in the drawer and the others continue to feed the monster. Whoever is in charge of the Council today should consider, before signing the next tender, whether the citizens voted for their party to lead the island or if, without knowing it, they outsourced their suffrage to a private consultancy.