The former Minister of Equality Irene Montero affirms that the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, demanded her resignation in the middle of the crisis due to the Law ‘only yes means yes’ and even emphasizes that he even asked “yelling” that When was his resignation going to occur?.
It also assumes that the decision of propose Díaz as a future candidate electoral after the departure of the Government of the former leader of Podemos Pablo Iglesias was the “biggest political mistake” committed by his training in these years.
This is what the current Podemos MEP puts it in his book ‘Something we will have done’, published by the ‘Navona’ publishing house and which will be presented this Monday afternoon at the Madrid cultural center La Casa Encendida, in which he reviews the main moments of his political career to the present.
For example, Montero criticizes that Moncloa, given the lack of agreement with Podemos at the beginning of last year for the reform of the criminal framework of the Law ‘only yes means yes’ due to the judicial resolutions that reduced sentences for sexual offenders, that His calculation was to “let her fall” instead of having a coordinated response to the “judicial offensive” and agreeing on an article that, according to what he claims, would leave consent at the center.
However, and according to his version, It was “very distressing and despicable” the way they acted then several of those who were his colleagues then in Unidas Podemos, asserting that Díaz requested his resignation in several meetings which he called “specifically for this”.
“To Isa Serra (current MEP of Podemos), in one of those meetings He asked him, shouting on several occasions, when he was going to resign. Irene Montero”, asserts the former minister to add that, a few days later, she was told that the vice president “could see it well” to dismiss the former Secretary of State for Equality Ángela Rodríguez ‘Pam’ and the former Government delegate against gender violence. , Vicky Rosell.
“Both (‘Pam’ and Rosell) came to my office to make their responsibilities available. I still cry with rage when I remember it. Yolanda was acting to force my resignation or that of a relevant person on my team,” Montero criticizes.
“Díaz multiplied the aggressiveness of the blows”
Then, he maintains that the decision to promote the reform proposed by the Ministry of Justice and “let Equality fall” was made by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, but the one who “multiplied the aggressiveness of the blows” was “Yolanda and who along with her decided that it was necessary to side with the PSOE and take advantage to try to mortally wound Podemos”.
She also assures that the “undoubtedly most painful moment” for her during those days with her former colleagues was with the current deputy of Sumar and leader of IU, Enrique Santiagoto whom he attributes that he “saw well” the PSOE proposal of return to the criminal scheme prior to the Law ‘only yes means yes’.
On February 1, 2023, the former minister recalls, she had a tense conversation with Santiago, whom she suspects is negotiating “on her own behalf or in that of Díaz with the PSOE, outside of Equality” and that when she raised her suspicions, he She replied that she was “castillated.” However, he says that he received a series of WhatsApp messages from Santiago himself that had sent “by mistake to the wrong Montero” (Minister of Finance María Jesús Montero), giving her an account of the conversation with her. “It’s the last time I spoke with Enrique,” he emphasizes.
Montero emphasizes that the entire PSOE endorsed the “counter-reform” of returning to the criminal framework prior to the Law ‘only yes is yes’ and that this is how they derived “all the pressure” to try to “break it” and make it come out “the hardest hit.” possible”. And he alleges that Díaz and others understood that “the reactionary judicial offensive was a golden opportunity for them.”
Montero: “Your career doesn’t have to end here”
On the other hand, he alleges that the night before the PSOE presented the reform of the law agreed with the PP in Congress, he received a call from the now first vice president. Maria Jesus Montero to explain to him that there was no more time to negotiate and that he sign with them the initiative to return to the previous Penal Code, something that in his opinion was “the surrender to the sexist judicial offensive” and “wash their face” by agreeing with the ‘popular’.
Specifically, she explains that she told her the following: “sign the reform, minister. Your political career doesn’t have to end here“. To which she responded no because she was convinced that it was a setback for feminist rights. “The most serious thing is that I don’t think it was a threat, even though it may seem like one (…) I was summarizing with enormous sincerity how the PSOE works.” , he assures.
That attitude also evoked Díaz when he stated that he called the general secretary of Podemos, Ione Belarra, to ask her if Montero wanted “perhaps an embassy, for example in Chile” because it was a good political solution. “They were (…) reproducing certain rules of power that they have surely also used against them and that they have accepted,” he reproaches.
The conclusion of Irene Montero After the controversy of the Law ‘only yes is yes’ and the clash with the PSOE over the reform of the law is that Sánchez decided to “silence feminism” and “punished” the “institutional feminism” that they had deployed from Equality.
“Veto” in the lists that Colau opposed
In turn, as Podemos already denounced in its day, Montero indicates that Díaz’s team informed his team that was “banned” to go on the electoral lists on 23J and which was decided in a meeting where the current Minister of Health, Mónica García, the former leader of IU Alberto Garzón, the former parliamentary spokesperson for Sumar, Íñigo Errejón, and the former mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau also participated. , although it asserts that the latter opposed its exclusion.
The former Minister of Equality states that There was an “operation” to replace Podemos with another electoral spacein reference to Sumar, that “he did not have political autonomy” nor did he go “beyond what the PSOE wanted” in the Government.
In this regard, he admits that they did not calculate, when they proposed the Minister of Labor as an electoral reference in 2021, that Díaz would lend himself to it as, in his opinion, Íñigo Errejón had already done before when he split from Podemos.
“Strengthen Diaz”
What’s more, he states that the “media and political progress” worked to “strengthen Díaz” to facilitate what she “wanted to do with all her strength: increasingly corner Podemos in a way that would nullify her capacity for political decision-making in the Government, for, in the medium term, replace the political leadership of the minority partner for another that prioritized getting along with the PSOE and not doing anything that it did not want.”
“The election of Yolanda was a determined commitment to expand the political space of Unidas Podemos (…) We were wrong. It was, to the extent that the opposite of what we were looking for occurred, reduction of the electoral space and subordination to the PSOE, the biggest political mistake we have made in these years“he confesses.
In another passage of his book he declares that, in the midst of a clash with the PSOE to stop delaying the approval of the Trans Lawthe vice president had sent her team the “suggestion” that they stop insisting on the processing of the rule “because generated a lot of problems” in the PSOE.
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