While the Xunta is working on a bill to reform Galician public media that increases political control and opens the door to Spanish – a text that has already been met with frontal rejection by the opposition, the Colexio de Xornalistas and the audiovisual sector – Galician society is mobilizing to try to ensure that the CRTVG “fulfils the objectives” for which it was created and “guarantees the objectivity and neutrality” of the content. With this objective, 40 entities grouped on the platform For a CRTVG ao service, do pobo registered a popular legislative initiative in the Parliament of Galicia, Let’s free Galega!which seeks to guarantee by law ideological and political pluralism, the defense of Galician identity and language and the promotion of equality.
Historical journalist Tareixa Navaza was in charge of serving as the platform’s spokesperson. Enthusiastic, she addressed the journalists who were recording her words directly: “You are working to strengthen democracy in this country. If you echo this initiative, among all the movements we are doing, because you are the umbilical cord with the citizens, you are doing the country a service.”
“The workers are not protesting to have a more powerful position, to have an increase in their payroll… No: they are doing it so that their code of ethics is respected and they can really put into practice the degree they have studied, which is nothing other than providing truthful information and serving the people of Galicia, who own the public media of Galicia,” he concluded, before receiving applause and hugs from the rest of the platform’s representatives.
Navaza recalled that employees of Galician public media “are subjected to brutal pressure, as we all know.” The spokesman recalled that “not only are the managers resorting to the courts” – the CEO himself, Alfonso Sánchez Izquierdo, is one of the eight accused in a case of harassment at work – “but that a significant number (of workers) have problems.” health. “It is inhuman, a parody of citizens and democracy,” concluded the veteran journalist.
Another way to elect the CEO
One of the most controversial aspects of Xunta’s bill is the possibility of appointing the CRTVG’s director general with an absolute majority in Parliament – a majority that the PP currently has – in the absence of a prior agreement with the qualified majority required by current law. It was the lack of agreement that gave Sánchez Izquierdo “the longest term since the creation of the CRTVG”, after the Galician government changed the rule to keep him “provisionally” in that position in the law accompanying the 2016 budgets; that is, almost ten years ago.
The Platform proposes, however, that the appointment be made by public competition, with the support of three-fifths of the Galician chamber and with the possibility of serving “only one more year” at the end of the term. After this period, a commission of three experts would be formed, who would need the same parliamentary support, and then the new person in charge would be appointed.
Now, after the presentation of the articulated text, the Bureau of the Parliament has one month to examine it and decide whether or not to admit it. In this case, you will have to inform the Electoral Council of Galicia so that it can guarantee the regularity of the procedure for collecting signatures by the promotion committee. The minimum to advance it is 10,000 signatures.
Among the entities promoting the campaign are the two main opposition parties in the Galician Parliament – the BNG and the PSOE -; several unions, including the most majority – CIG, UGT and CCOO -, A Mesa for Linguistic Normalization, associations of writers, musicians and actors as well as cultural, feminist, environmental or public health groups, historically discriminated against in news broadcasts on regional radio and television.
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