Elena Sánchez and a communist advisor, both in conflict with Pedro Sánchez, will decide whether Cascajosa remains president of RTVE

The former president Elena Sanchez y José Manuel Martín Medem they can overthrow the interim Cascajosa Conception (and leave her without a salary of almost 200,000 euros per year). The situation at the top of Radio Television Española is very complicated. The public Corporation has an interim president whose mandate has expired, five of the nine members of the Board of Directors are in the same situation and the parliamentary weakness of the Government prevents the renewal of positions.

RTVE has been without a Content Director and General Secretary for several months, and for several days without the Chief of Staff of the interim president Concepción Cascajosa, who was celebrating the success of David Broncano until the opposition scandal has put her feet on the ground.

The public Corporation postponed the exam in the Information and Content plazas this Sunday after most of the questions from the selection process were leaked.

Cascajosa’s future hangs in the balance

On September 27, 6 months passed since the appointment as interim president of Cascajosa, who in principle was going to remain in office for a semester and now wants to remain in office. For now, last week he managed to postpone a vote to decide his future. The board has a salary that is close to 200,000 euros thanks to the more than 12,000 fixed euros per month that it receives as a sum of basic salary for senior management personnel (8,797), complement per position (3,166.91) and seniority (250, 35). To this we must add the bonuses for objectives, which range between 30,000 and 60,000 euros per year.

The PSOE promised to rotate the presidency, but the intention of the party led by Pedro Sánchez is to keep Cascajosa as boss or, as plan b, place the historic Ramón Colom, 72, at the top of RTVE, who now says he does not want opt for the position after a long time maneuvering to achieve it.

The former director of TVE is one of the 4 votes that the ‘governmental bloc’ has, made up of Cascajosa and Colom themselves, Roberto Lakidain (designated by Comisiones Obreras, related to Podemos and initiator of the signing of Pablo Iglesias for Mañaneros and 59 seconds) and Juan José Baños (director of Grupo Noticias, which is the private media group closest to the PNV).

The ‘opposition bloc’, which has not suffered any changes since the current Board of Directors was formed in March 2021, has 3 votes: Jenaro Castro (more appeased after achieving an interview slot on La 2, General plan), Carmen Sastre (head of National during the controversial era of Alfredo Urdaci and director of News Content under the Government of Mariano Rajoy) and Consuelo Aparicio (the least noisy of the triangle related to Génova 13).

Deciding the votes is the ‘free bloc’, made up of former president Elena Sánchez (hurt with La Moncloa because she was fired from office for overthrowing José Pablo López due to the controversy over the signing of David Broncano, who did not enjoy his full confidence) and José Manuel Martín Medem (who was already a councilor in the 90s by appointment of the IU with Julio Anguita, currently directs the historic Mundo Obrero of the PCE and, like his friend, does not accept political guidelines).

The PSOE fears the return of Elena Sánchez

The PSOE fears that if the rotation occurs and Colom resigns, Elena Sánchez could return to office. The board will not follow the doctrine of La Moncloa, in need of media support in the midst of a conservative offensive. Pedro Sánchez’s ‘plan b’ would be to appoint a sole administrator by decree law, as he did in July 2018 with Rosa María Mateo. The veteran journalist was appointed after the lack of understanding between PSOE and Podemos to elect president.

Some voices remember that in July 2021, when Mateo had been away from RTVE for three months after the formation of a Board of Directors chaired by José Manuel Pérez Tornero, the Constitutional Court partially annulled the decree law. The statement, merely declarative and without real consequences, stressed that the use of the figure of the decree law was for the adoption of important decisions and that with it the Senate was marginalized in the designation process.

Judicial sources also remember that the conservative majority of the Constitutional Court in 2021 has given way to a current progressive majority of the court, which could endorse another blow from Pedro Sánchez.

RTVE and the oppositions

“It was a unanimous agreement of the Employment Commission, where management and unions are represented. RTVE has already reported it to the Police and has opened an investigation to determine responsibilities and find out what and how it happened,” RTVE explained on Sunday. to announce the paralysis of the oppositions.

Cascajosa herself spoke this Monday to a group of workers who were protesting against the ridicule carried out by state radio and television. “We ask for understanding. We give full recognition to all the efforts of both the in-house and external staff. We have every right to protest, I wanted to come and greet you to tell you that we are listening to you. I hope that the meeting that is going to take place now of the Employment Commission to come out with concrete measures”. Many said that the president of RTVE neither apologized nor gave any explanation.

The oppositions announced by RTVE excited many professionals, since they had not been called since 2007. The current ones, which offer 1,470 jobs, have suffered the scandalous leak that was denounced by the USO union.

The theoretical exam to fill places in the RTVE Information and Content category will finally be held next Saturday, November 2. This was decided yesterday by the RTVE Employment Commission, where management and unions are represented, in an urgent and extraordinary meeting held in Prado del Rey. In it, the change of all the members of the court was unanimously agreed upon. Previously, the part of the court appointed by the company has resigned en bloc.

It should be remembered that this same opposition process was blocked a few months ago by court order, they had to extend the deadline due to a problem with the opposition platform and, to make matters worse, on August 6, RTVE reported that it learned that on the platform of the Corporation, managed by the company CEGOS, a security incident had occurred related to the unauthorized download of existing documentation in the database, affecting, in some cases, personal data of the participants in the application process. oppositions.

Faced with this situation, the Corporation assured that it proceeded “to request the immediate blocking of access, restoring the service a few hours later, once the incident was corrected and all security measures were ensured.”

RTVE stated that it had immediately opened an investigation procedure “and the events that occurred have already been reported to the Police so that, based on the investigations that are being carried out regarding the unauthorized downloading of documentation, the legal actions that correspond to the different responsible parties”.

RTVE has spent more than 1 million euros renting the platform, assured that it has requested an audit of the incident from CEGOS to determine possible responsibilities, and announced that it is working to develop its own platform for future employment processes. .