Saturday, August 06, 2011

The war of words continues

Aurelio Murcia hounded both of the socialist mayors in the press when they were in office. Now that the tables are turned, it is Raúl Valerio Medina’s time to do the same to Murcia.

Medina came back on the announcement of cuts in staffing at the pre-school Bigastrin and quoted the amount of the Government grant that the council will receive. He went on to say that the minimum requirement would be for one teacher and one assistant in each classroom and finally said that to restrict the applications to people from the town was illegal (I would think he is probably right about that).

Murcia now says that he is, at the very least, curious to know how the previous mayor knows the details of the grant from the Department of Education which would infer that he still has precise information about the town’s bank accounts.

Murcia goes on to explain that the law only requires one teacher per classroom of children at Bigastrin. He says that there is no stipulation made about the number of assistants.

Finally the spokesman for the coalition, Aurelio Murcia, says that instead of obstructing the work of the PP and the UPLC which he says is transparent and legal, Medina should tell the people of Bigastro about the economic situation that his party left the town in and why he made decisions which were detrimental to Bigastro, when he was mayor.

Murcia says he could start by explaining to parents why, whilst they were charged for catering at Bigastrin, the company that provided the food are owed 103,265 Euros which includes 11,203 Euros in interest.

It is of course the right and proper for the opposition to oppose but, given the state of the town after 28 years of socialist rule, I think Medina should be a bit circumspect about going to the press unless he is a) very clear of the facts and b) certain no blame could be attributed to the his former administration. If I was him I would, for the moment at least, restrict my comments and criticisms to council meetings and steer clear of announcements to the press. From past experience, whether it is right or wrong, in a “war of words” Murcia generally has the last say.

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