A group of business people in Veracruz are so eager to see the last of the governor they have set up a clock to count the remaining days of his administration.

The timepiece has been installed in a park in the state capital of Xalapa where it counts down the time — to the very second — left in Governor Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares’ administration.

The business owners claim the state has been in arrears with them since 2014, when the governor was Javier Duarte Ochoa. After Yunes took office in 2016 he pledged that he would pay off all the debts incurred by his predecessor.

Nearly two years later, with just over three months left in Yunes’s two-year term, the debt has actually increased to an alleged 300 million pesos (nearly US $16 million).

Close to 50 business people from around the state joined forces in late May and created Empresarios SOS, an organization to present a common front and press for what they are owed by the government.

During a press conference at the time, the members of the organization said that they were “on the brink of bankruptcy.”

When the clock strikes zero on November 30, the governor’s last day in office, Empresarios SOS plans to hold a party in downtown Xalapa to celebrate the end of “the worst administration of Veracruz.”

The organizers of the celebration have declared that if the state government pays up they will suspend the party.

Source: e-Veracruz (sp), Plumas Libres (sp)