After spending nearly an hour repeating in the Madrid Assembly that the information he had about the extraordinary professorship of the wife of the President of the Government was based on press information and the “many ‘inputs’” or opinions that came to him from professionals from inside and outside the university, the dean of the Faculty of Information Sciences of the Complutense University of Madrid, Jorge Clemente, encountered this week the abrupt question of the socialist deputy Marta Bernardo:
— Do you have any specific relationship with the case at hand?
– Nothing.
In that “nothing” that the dean recognized, the second session of an investigative commission was developed, broadly speaking, that aims to elucidate the alleged favorable treatment of Begoña Gómez, co-director of the chair of Competitive Social Transformation at the Complutense. Since Gómez did not testify on the first day, the rector denied any irregularity in the creation of the title and the general auditor only reported an administrative infraction in a contract for 24,000 euros of services that were provided, the PP and Vox were They are now trying to breathe encouragement into a commission that will last at least until February, although with diminishing expectations.
The popular ones had placed certain hopes in the intervention of Dean Clemente, since his relationship with the rector, Joaquín Goyache, is not exactly cordial: he asked for his resignation in a governing council of the university held in July, precisely as a result of the information from press about Begoña Gómez’s master’s degree. This Wednesday he denounced alleged irregularities, but not related to Gómez, but rather to eminently formal defects in the operation of the extraordinary chairs of his own faculty.
He also said that they have opened a file on him for “workplace harassment” for being excessively inquisitive regarding the case, according to his suspicion. Furthermore, he speculated that the rector may have decided at the time to authorize Gómez’s extraordinary professorship to grease his relations with the PSOE, in the same way that the granting of the title of illustrious student to Isabel Díaz Ayuso could seek to cement his good treatment with the PP. Maybe yes, but maybe not, because he had no evidence in one case or the other, as he immediately added.
Reputation and misinformation
The dean’s investigative zeal was due, as he explained, to “the reputational damage” caused to the university after Gómez’s relationship with the institution was revealed to the press. The deputies also asked the other two speakers of the day about the question of reputation, the rector of the Autonomous University (UAM), Amaya Mendikoetxea, and her counterpart at Carlos III, Ángel Arias, called to the session by Más Madrid to explain the procedures of their respective institutions regarding extraordinary professorships.
Both wanted to be diplomatic, but they implied that the issue, which is minor in economic terms – the financing of the extraordinary professorships does not exceed 0.5% of the budget – could have been inflated by the media. “So much information and misinformation about the case affects the reputation not of the Complutense, but of all public universities,” said Mendikoetxea. “There is a lot of information and there is a lot of misinformation. A collective effort must be made to value the work of teaching and research,” said Arias.
The two agreed, as was already known before the commission was called and Goyache had reiterated in the initial session, that the name “chair” may be misleading for these degrees financed by companies. Daniel Varela and Antonio Sánchez, from Más Madrid, argued that its mere existence could spur the colonization of the public institution by the private sector, but that was not the object of the debate, as the president of the commission, the popular Susana Pérez, insisted. Quislant.
The rector of the UAM recalled that she has had to make “a significant cut” due to insufficient university funding, and the rector of Carlos III went further. “The budget, if the current figures are maintained, seriously compromises the activity,” he said about the regional government’s accounts, after ensuring that “the staff is in a critical situation.”
Sessions at least until February
The lackluster course of the session suggests limited benefit from the following appearances, which move away, like concentric circles, from the examination of the alleged favorable treatment of Gómez to focus on lower-ranking officials and technicians. There are two days of work left before the end of the year and the next ones will not be held until February, since January is a non-working month in the Madrid Assembly. But Vox has asked to go further and now investigate the computer program made available to Gómez’s chair with private financing, a possibility that the PP does not rule out and that may extend the commission until spring.
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