The mayor of Mérida (Badajoz), Antonio Rodríguez Osuna, has affirmed today that he does not intend to resign after a telephone conversation with a former temporary worker of the City Council was made public where the councilor threatened him, like the rest of the employees in this employment situation, never to hire them more while the PSOE were in charge of the City Council if they went to the Courts to try to get a permanent position: “Whoever denounces the City Council will not work anymore in his fucking life, not even as a bailiff, while the PSOE is there.”
In this sense, and to questions from journalists in an act, Rodríguez Osuna has assured that he will expand the complaint against the former worker once “the blackmail has been made effective” after the one he filed in 2021 “for blackmail, threats and coercion” Well, according to the alderman, he threatened the Personnel councilor in his office to make these recordings public if they did not make him a fixed contract after having insisted on it “up to seven times”, according to the mayor’s version.
Likewise, regarding the requests of the opposition in the Emeritense consistory that he resign due to the content of the audios, Rodríguez Osuna has explained that he has sent “the gross” of the recordings to the municipal groups of the Consistory”, and has remarked that he “no” is going to leave his position in which he has held two consecutive legislatures. “I am not going to resign, I am here on the spot, I am going now to another presentation and therefore I have nothing more to say, everything is already explained”, he has declared.
In this sense, he has assured that he only had to clarify about the controversy: “I refer to what I said yesterday at the press conference. I explained it very clearly and if they (the opposition) consider that what I explained was They deserve, they are within their right to do so, but I cannot count more than what I said yesterday in a 17-minute press conference”.
The councilor also did not want to clarify if after revealing the audios he has maintained contact with the general secretary of his party in Extremadura, Guillermo Fernández Vara: “The private conversations that I have are for me, because if not then we make them public again “
In addition, when asked if he retracts the statements in which he is heard saying that the worker who denounces the City Council will no longer work in the council, the mayor replied: “I explained absolutely everything, how the processes work, how the hiring works in the City Council…, which does not name the courts, nor is any member there, they are all civil servants”, he concluded.
At one point in the conversation with the former municipal worker of the Parks and Works service, the mayor blurts out: “There are a lot of people, lifelong party colleagues, who have told me the same thing. We did them a favor to be working for a while, but not to stay for the rest of your life. What happens to people is that you shake their hand and they take your foot”, referring to those hired in temporary employment exchanges on several occasions and who, they consider, that this system leads them to be working in fraud of the law, for which they ask to be permanent, with the recommendation of the unions, which the mayor also criticizes for advising workers who have this type of contract in this way: “The unions are very smart, but they never show their faces, nothing more than their mouths, and the one who goes to ‘trullo’ is me and I won’t go to ‘trullo’ for anyone”.
After unanimously asking all the opposition parties for his resignation, the Popular Municipal Group has registered this Friday a request for the creation of an investigation commission after the “scandal” that “has caused a national embarrassment for the city.”
In said letter, sent by the PP spokesperson, Pilar Nogales, allusions are made to said recordings in which the mayor “affirms that illegal activities are supposedly carried out and that they could constitute crimes.”
Given the “seriousness” of said “affirmations” and to clarify these “extremes”, the PP requests the creation of said special investigation commission “to purify the political responsibilities that may exist and eliminate the doubts that municipal workers and citizens may have before labor contracting procedures and public bidding for service contracts”.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project