The short-lived three party (or four if you include CLARO) coalition in Orihuela is over already; not even two weeks after it was formed at the eleventh hour.

Round Town News | Noticia

According to the Green Party leader at a press conference earlier this week, the coalition had failed to reach an agreement on how the new government team would be made up and on Monday, Los Verdes leader and new Orihuela Mayor Monserrate Guillén gave CLR leader, Pedro Mancebo, an ultimatum to: “Come to the table by Tuesday morning or PSOE and Los Verdes will run the Orihuela Town Hall as a minority government.”

BREAKDOWN
The political parties that supported Monserrate Guillén as Mayor on June 11th were supposed to form the municipal government but the negotiations broke down because of disagreements on the division of the departments and work areas. Snr Guillén, called the press conference to explain the reason for the breakdown of talks and was accompanied by Councillors of both Los Verdes and PSOE, including leader Antonia Moreno. He had demanded that CLR agreed to what was offered them by Tuesday as that is when the he was going to sign the decree to distribute the council seats.
CLARO President, Bob Houliston, had by that stage abandoned his coalition partners and accepted the role of Councillor for the Coast.

BROKEN
Guillén explained to members of the press that negotiations had been taking place for more than a week and they could not reach any agreement of government. He said: “The negotiations broke down after CLR did not accept my proposals as to how the council seats would be shared.”
The major point of disagreement between the parties was the council seat of municipal planning or Urbanism. CLR and PSOE both wanted and demanded the position and according to reports, Monserrate Guillén, as the Mayor, decided that this area was to be handed to PSOE as the majority party. Later, discussions turned to Tourism and Infrastructure and again the current Mayor gave those posts to PSOE.

DISTANCE
Having explained the situation, the Los Verdes leader then told reporters that among the departments that were on offer to CLR were Personnel, Human Resources, Administration, Modernisation Activities, Recruitment, Tourism, Trade, Markets, Foreign Residents and Festivities, but they had rejected them and even though PSOE was prepared to barter with them for Tourism and Infrastructure, CLR would not back down. The Coast was then handed to CLARO President, Bob Houliston, who has been very quick to distance himself from CLR.

The current Mayor said that he was quite prepared to work with PSOE and form a minority government with ten councillors and have the fifteen remaining councillors (12 PP and 3 CLR) as opposition, but that will mean that it is highly unlikely that anything positive will get done in the municipality over the next four years; which is a great shame for the residents of Orihuela.

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