The Councillor for International Residents in Orihuela, Martina Scheurer, has provided details of voting in the recent elections in the municipality, showing a particularly poor turnout in the coastal area.
13 parties participated in the local elections of Orihuela 2015
8 of them did not get the sufficient votes to reach the 5% to get one councillor.
The results are as follows:
Partido Popular 11 seats
PSOE 8
Ciudadanos 3
Cambiemos 2
Foro Democrata 1
As we can see from those results, CLARO did not get enough votes to get a representation in the town hall, in spite of having Asun Mayoral as number 2 to attract votes from Orihuela town. Within the coming days and until the 13th of June the negotiations will take place to build a Government in a coalition.
In Orihuela Costa there were 9 electoral tables distributed in 3 premises, the town hall Playa Flamenca, the Civic Center and the Reading Point in Calle Cipres.
Criticism came up stating that the Reading Point was too difficult to find and that for this reason “many people at the end did not vote”, a fact which is denied by the following data:
Town Hall Playa Flamenca, 4 tables, total of 1.066 votes
Reading Point Calle Cipres, 3 tables, total of 908 votes
Centro Civico, 2 tables, total of 410 votes.
The most disappointing data of these elections is the very little participation of citizens of Orihuela Costa. Around 8.200 citizens in Orihuela Costa would have had the right to vote, but only 2.384 did so, which corresponds to 29,4% (42% in 2011) when the total participation of the whole municipality was 62,62% (nearly 9% less than in 2011). Of course as usual before local elections, all parties “rediscovered” Orihuela Costa and did promise big improvements and it was difficult to make a choice, but citizens of Orihuela Costa unfortunately still do not understand that their participation in local elections is the way to achieve improvements and that they really could make a change in local government if they would want to.
