The president of the Provincial Council of Ourense hunted at 215km/h with an official car resigns from re-election

The acting president of the Ourense Provincial Council, Manuel Baltar (PP), will not be eligible for re-election for the next term. This was announced by himself this Wednesday through a statement in which he stated: “I rule out being part of the next provincial corporation”. In fact, he will not even take possession of his record as councilor for Esgos next Saturday.

This resignation of Baltar comes amid an intense controversy that surrounded the municipal elections on May 28 after he was fined for driving at 215 km/h on the A-52 highway in Zamora on April 23 driving an official vehicle of the Provincial Council of Ourense. Less than an hour earlier, that same day, it had also been detected driving at 173 in a section limited to 120. At the moment, he is pending trial for a crime against road safety.

Baltar, who gave explanations in a plenary session of the Provincial Council, assures that this step back “does not diminish, at all”, his commitment to Ourense, where he continues to be provincial president. “I will continue fighting as always for the future of this province,” he assures, and marks the “imminent challenge” of contributing to the arrival of Alberto Núñez Feijóo to the Presidency of Spain in the next general elections.

Manuel Baltar has been president of the Ourense Provincial Council since February 2012, 11 years ago, after taking over from his father, the historic José Luis Baltar, leader of the Ourense PP for decades and president of the Provincial Council for 22 years.

In the last municipal elections, the PP won the elections at the provincial level and obtained 12 deputies for the Ourense Provincial Council, a number that does not guarantee an absolute majority for the investiture, so that his presidency had not yet been decided. In his statement, Baltar recalled that the party “won the elections” and that he works “to form solvent popular governments throughout the entire territory.”

Baltar contextualizes his resignation in his work to “make it easier for the Provincial Council to have a president of the Popular Party”, of which he assures that it is the only political formation that participated in the elections on May 28 with a provincial project to develop for continue promoting Ourense.

“There is no greater interest than the interest of the province,” insists Manuel Baltar, who considers that the configuration of local corporations “is not a matter of names but of acronyms and projects”. For him, “politics is responsibility and stability”, hence his resignation.

tripartite offer

The PP has marked this Wednesday the municipal political news of Ourense, convulsed since at the gates of the electoral campaign of 28-M began to leak audios now judicialized starring the acting mayor, Gonzalo Pérez Jácome. Faced with the controversial figure of the alderman, the popular leader, Manuel Cabezas, has extended his hand to the PSOE and the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG) for a tripartite.

This possible coalition government between the three political formations would mean unseating Pérez Jácome, who managed to make his party, Democracia Orensana (DO) the most voted list, but with insufficient support to govern alone. Four years ago he was sworn in as mayor with the support of the PP, but relations broke down during his term.

Cabezas' proposal goes through a tripartite group led by the PP and with two deputy mayors, one from the PSOE and the other from the BNG. They would be 6 popular councillors, 5 socialists and 3 nationalists and would be “a great example of political sanity, putting the interests of the city and not partisan interests first.”

Cabezas has transferred the proposal to the other groups and maintains that “socially an agreement is expected and desired”, which “would be a necessary example in politics and a unique example”, since it would imply a coalition between right-wing and left-wing parties.
This agreement clashes with the usual premise of the leader of his party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in favor of the list with the most votes governing, but Cabezas maintains that Ourense is an “exception” that favors this agreement. “We are talking about a situation that is nothing like what exists in other cities or in other population centers where agreements are being negotiated,” he maintains.