04/09/2005 00:00
TW
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by Staff Reporter
IT will be a long weekend for Mayor Carlos Delgado of Calvia as he debates his political future.
As reported yesterday, he has been ordered by his party, the Partido Popular (PP) to sack Joan Thomas, the councillor who resigned from the Majorcan Unionist (UM) party to support a controversial planning motion, against the wishes of his party. The PP rules in Calvia thanks to a pact with the UM, which had two councillors, giving it a majority vote. The two parties have similar agreements in the Council of Majorca and other town councils and there are fears that these alliances will now be endangered.

Balearic leader Jaume Matas, who also heads the local branch of the party, ordered Delgado to sack Thomas after a meeting of the executive committee.
But at an emergency meeting of the Calvia PP committee yesterday, Delgado was given a vote of confidence, and was asked to keep Thomas in his post.
In a five-point document, the Calvia branch of the PP expressed its wish to maintain its pact with the UM, and announced that Delgado would have a meeting with the remaining UM councillor Isidre Cañellas, tomorrow “to revise” the alliance.

The document says that the Calvia PP respects the regional committee's decision to ask Delgado to sack Thomas from his posts in maintenance, the environment, roads and works and new technologies,” but called on the “autonomy afforded it by the Statutes” to ask Delgado not to sack Thomas.

The document says that keeping Thomas on the team is the only way “to guarantee stability and will no doubt lead to better management in favour of residents.” The third point says that given the evidence, “if the PP rules in Calvia today it is thanks to the refusal of Joan Thomas to second a motion of censure instigated by the UM.” “Despite this,” the document says, “it is the will of this local committee to maintain the pact with UM, which has given good results for the municipality.” Delgado said yesterday that he will do “everything humanly possible” to make the presence of the two councillors, Isidre Cañellas and Joan Thomas, compatible on the ruling team.

However, after learning the results of the meeting in Calvia, the executive committee issued a communique ratifying its earlier decision, to make Delgado sack Thomas.

It also called on the local committee to start contacts with UM to ensure that the agreement between the two parties is kept until the end of the legislature.