Crisis absenteeism

There has been a curious link between the Barceló departure and this week’s stand by Més minister for social affairs, Fina Santiago.

The crisis which has arisen from the scandal of the child sexual exploitation cases is of a very different order to that of the Més contracts. Most of the public would have been indifferent to the contracts affair; most of the public is not indifferent to this latest crisis.
Yet amidst this crisis, and most notably in parliament on Tuesday, there was an absentee - President Armengol. The curious link is that it was Barceló absenting himself for a fully paid-for trip to the Dominican Republic which led to his resignation. He had a justification for this, just as the president does for her absence - a visit to India to see how Balearic government cooperation funds are being spent. Fina Santiago is actually the minister for cooperation, but be that as it may.

At the moment when she most needed Armengol, Santiago discovered that the president was nowhere to be seen. The trip to India had of course been planned in advance, but because of a crisis, should it not have been put off?