Cries of “usurper” and a hundred doctors ask before the Madrid College that the electoral vote be respected: “Sellés, squatter!”
“The Madrid College of Physicians has become a house of trouble. “Our board meets all the legal requirements!” Tomás Merina shouted this Wednesday afternoon in front of a hundred white coats. He is the winner of the last Icomem elections, in which twice as many people voted for him as the current president, Manuel Martínez-Sellés. The difference was 4,475 votes compared to the 2,393 for Sellés and the 2,580 that the other candidate, Esther Rubio, obtained. But a month after the elections, on December 16, the Governing Commission of the collegiate body announced that his candidacy was invalidated and his inauguration, scheduled for this week, annulled.
The reason given is that he was retired and, therefore, did not meet one of the required criteria that required the president of Icomem to be “in exercise” of the profession. However, his surroundings and himself deny it, so everything will depend on what ends up being considered active or not. But the confusion was such that Merina has called her acolytes and sympathizers to gather at the doors of the doctors' headquarters and demand that the electoral result be respected. The decision that has left him at the doorstep of directing the College of Physicians has been made by an entity in charge of resolving appeals against certain internal resolutions.
This commission appears reflected in the Icomem statutes and, in this case, it was Sellés himself who promoted the challenge. He claims to have done so during the electoral period, but the final ruling did not arrive until the week before his opponent took office. The president himself announced the same day the news broke that he would not run for re-election “for a moral issue,” understanding that coming last required a new face.
“The colleagues from the Resources Commission are poorly advised, and I don't know if Sellés has communicated to them the responsibility they are assuming,” Merina stated in front of those attending the rally. Among them were both members of the group that ran for its board, such as emergency specialist and talk show host César Carballo; or union representatives such as Ángela Hernández, general secretary of Amyts and representative of Merina.
“Sellés should have resigned when five members of his board left [hace más de tres años]but he didn't. If they are still so insistent now, it is because they have to cover up something or their interests exceed the ordinary: they cling to the School like ticks,” Hernández stated at the end of the demonstration, in statements to Somos Madrid. The majority medical union in the region supported Tomás Merina from the beginning, which earned the latter the label “the Amyts candidate.”
In front of the media, the winner of the elections reiterated after his speech this Wednesday the “evidence” of Sellés' connection with the secretary of the Resources Commission that determined his departure, despite the fact that the second denies that this is recorded. as a delegate in his candidacy. Icomem sources unrelated to Merina's candidacy, in addition to their own team, assured that internal information allows them to corroborate that Jesús Castellano Alarcón is one of the five members of this body as well as the current president's representative.
After Merina's speech in front of the headquarters of the College of Physicians, one of the members of the current leadership opened the door, Maria Cordon. For a few minutes and in front of the audience, both had a private conversation in which, according to what has emerged later, it reminded the leader of Icomem For Everyone that his team “is only trying to defend legality”, in reference to the fact that the statement issued by the College annulling his takeover was nothing more than a consequence of the decision made by a third party, the Resources Commission .
The turbulence within Icomem has also reached the courts. Those of Tomás Merina have placed their hopes in an appeal that they have presented before the Contentious-Administrative Court of Madrid, requesting extremely precautionary measures to freeze the decision until it is resolved whether this resolution is truly correct. Ana Galán, one of the representatives of the winner in the elections and who attended this afternoon's protest, is clear about what, in her case, was the turning point to get fully involved in internal politics: “I still remember when the current board supported to the regional government in the primary care and pediatrics strike [de 2022]. It seemed shameful to me and then I decided: this couldn't be.”
