“The council's mistake was that it didn't listen....”

The President-elect, Jose Ramon Bauza, will have to wait to introduce his austerity measures because he will be sworn in last but, the mayor-elect of Palma, Mateu Isern, who won a thundering majority to oust the Socialist-led but split coalition last Sunday, will be able to sweep the board clean from June 11 when he will officially take over his new position in City Hall.

One of his first steps will be to reduce the number of advisors and high ranking council officials by 25 percent.
Isern said yesterday that he has great faith in the capabilities of the public sector and the civil service but he wants a “well prepared and tight team to manage the capital properly,” something he claims has not been done over the past four years. “We will be auditing the departments and if necessary looking under all the carpets to see where the money is or has gone. “We intend to manage professionally, revive the city's economy and if we find things we don't like, we'll have them investigated,” he explained.
With regards to his victory last Sunday, he admitted that the general economic crisis gripping Spain was partly to blame but he also firmly pointed the finger at the out-going Socialist mayor, Aina Calvo, for having failed to listen to the people. “They didn't deliver what the public wanted, they got their priorities wrong and paid the price. It's not a case of what the government and the council did, it's more the case of what they failed to do that cost them the elections” he said.