02/07/2011
María Dolores de Cospedal: “One of the greatest problems that the Spanish society has lately had is that, from a Government leadership and a Government that led the Spanish society, we gave gone to a failed government lasting seven years, because he who received the citizens’ mandate has been unable to meet it”
“The problems endured by the Spanish society from a social and economic point of view, and of any kind really, can be rectified if that failed mandate is substituted by a strong leadership that is committed, far-looking and has a sense of State, which is what the Partido Popular, with Mariano Rajoy at its head, can give back to the Spanish society”
“In Spain, budget soundness, austerity, reforms and tax cuts, which brought so much prosperity to our country, were changed by a situation where we had indebtedness as a rule, budget deviation as the chronic problem of public finances, the hardening of the tax burdens for the middle classes and a structural deficit in the State’s Administration and, of course, also in the running of our Autonomous Communities and of a very important part of local entities”
“This view of the management of public resources based on the notion that the citizen has not sufficient intelligence to manage himself and that the society is not sufficiently mature to rule itself has led us to Governments that have clipped citizens’ wings, deprived civil society of its rights, squandered public resources and deficiently managed our resources. And they have inefficiently managed resources because they thought they were not accountable to anyone”
“Political notions of power, administrative multiplications, and regulatory tangles have much to do with economic crisis and vice versa. And it is all part of a misconception of what a Government should be”
“One thing is effectively and austerely managing the resources allocated to social services and another is reducing the social services reaching the citizens. And I would like to say that, as I think they are different things, as we have repeatedly said so, we will do it our way”
“The first guarantee of basic public services is effectively managing public resources. And that cannot be adopted by one or two regions alone, it has to come from the State”
“Respect for citizens’ freedoms, a notion of the Government as that which is given by the citizens to themselves to manage that which belongs to all, and that is only justified as long as it respects the freedoms of citizens, precisely because it gives them greater guarantees in security, in freedom and in the exertion of their rights; that notion is the notion I believe in”