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Balearic President should set an example

Jason MoorePalma26/10/2020 10:00

Balearic President, Francina Armengol, was right to apologise for the late night drinking scandal. Whatever she says, and I don´t doubt her version of events in which she states that she only stayed in the bar because a member of her team was taken ill - she should have known better. A bar in the early hours of the morning in a city which has a high level of the coronavirus is no place for a senior politician, especially as she broke her own government´s coronavirus protocols.

The fact that a witchhunt has now been launched to discover who leaked the story to the local media only makes matters even more serious. It is not a question of the story being leaked, it a case of what was she doing out in Palma in the early hours? I was having lunch in a bar on Friday and the owner shouted to anyone who was listening that he couldn´t serve people at the bar but the Balearic President could go to the bar until the early hours and nothing would be said. Of course, he is not wrong. This incident sent out the wrong message. This weekend even further measures could be introduced by the government to try and halt the spread of the coronavirus across the country. There could be further curbs on mobility and even a curfew.

We are all being asked to make sacrifices and Armengol should lead by example. When she finishes work she should go home like the rest of us. I sincerely doubt that she will be forced to resign over this case, but it is just another example of politicians asking us to do one thing and them doing another. The scandal will go away but it won´t be forgotten.