More than twenty-four hours have passed and the Popular Party has not managed to reach a common version on how he has addressed the accusations of sexual harassment that ultra MEP Alvise Pérez launched against his senator and mayor of Algeciras, José Ignacio Landaluce. Alberto Núñez Feijóopresident of the PP, Miguel Telladospokesperson in Congress, and Cuca Gamarrageneral secretary, have given different versions and have referred the matter to the PP of Andalusia, which in turn has rectified Feijóo and Gamarra. A tangle of contradictions.
First thing in the morning, it was Feijóo who put the matter on the table. “Yesterday there was a reference to one of our senators and we automatically spoke with him and this matter was clarified, because we know that this can happen,” said the president of the PP in an interview in esRadio. He was referring to some screenshots of alleged conversations between two councilors in Algeciras that recounted situations of harassment by Landaluce.
After the interview, sources from Feijóo’s team clarified to this newspaper that “the management” of this matter corresponded to the PP of Andalusia and that they were the popular Andalusians who conveyed to Genoa that everything was clarified. Furthermore, the national leadership of the PP denied having activated the party’s anti-harassment protocol.
Just three hours later, in the Congress of Deputies, Miguel Tellado was pronounced as follows: “The parties have been contacted to obtain this information and in the next few hours they will reach the conclusions, once the parties can be contacted, which have been cited in information of which we certainly do not know if it is gives truth. Therefore, let us be cautious.”
And a few minutes later, Cuca Gamarra assured that, from the leadership of the PP of Cádiz, “those two women were asked” and both “denied any type of attitude that they wanted to denounce.” However, when asked if the PP had activated the anti-harassment protocol, he responded “yes”: “It was activated yesterday.”
What does the PP protocol establish?
From Genoa they deny it and claim that in order to do so a complaint is needed. Since August, when the parity law came into force, it is mandatory for all political parties to have a protocol to detect and act in the event of a possible case of sexist violence. Last week, once the ‘Errejón case’ had broken out, this media outlet asked the PP for its protocol – the law does not require it to be public except for internal knowledge – but they refused to provide it. Yes, they did it this Tuesday after the mess of explanations about Araluce.
The document, to which you have had access Publicestablishes that “the procedure is initiated by a complaint from the alleged victim of harassment (or by the Subject Person who, not being a victim of harassment, witnesses it) addressed to the director of the Human Resources Department or the OCN through the channel ethical”. The Regulatory Compliance Body (OCN) is located at the national headquarters and reports to Feijóo management..
The anti-harassment protocol was not activated and what the Feijóo leadership has done is to accept the “investigations” carried out by the PP of Cádiz which, as explained in a statement, consisted of gathering the versions of the two councilors and the mayor of Algeciras: the three deny the complaint launched by Alvise Perez.
Thus, on the afternoon of this Tuesday the PP of Cádiz considered the matter closed and denounced that “other parties such as Se Acabó La Fiesta” were using “false complaints to attack the adversary”. The national leadership insists that all necessary inquiries were made. No one in the PP, not even the two councilors involved, have described as false the screenshots from the instant messaging application Whatsapp leaked by Alvise and deleted shortly afterwards in which they supposedly narrate a situation of sexual harassment and assault.
A judge investigates the mayor of Estepona
This Tuesday it was also learned that a court in Estepona (Málaga) is investigating whether the mayor of the town, José María García Urbano (PP), could have committed an alleged crime of sexual harassmentas reported to Public sources from the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA). The councilor also says that this is a “false” complaint and that he is “suffering” from an “unfair and inadmissible” campaign against him.
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