The parliamentary spokesperson for the popular, Cuca Gamarra, challenges the socialists to start the process in Congress “next week”
The PP redoubles the pressure on the Government to “urgently” face the reform of the “only yes is yes” law and they once again offer their votes for it. 72 hours after it became known that PSOE and Unidas Podemos have been negotiating a formula for two months to try to stop the reductions in pensions for sexual offenders, the spokesperson for the popular, Cuca Gamarra, has challenged the Socialists to take the Ministry’s proposal of Justice to Congress “next week”, to start the procedures, such as taking it into consideration, “as soon as possible”.
Gamarra believes that the issue is “extremely serious” due to the “social alarm that is being generated” and criticizes that the coalition continues to diverge in some aspects “while in others, such as sedition, they solve it in 24 hours.” And he has also demanded the resignation of the head of Equality, Irene Montero: «When things are done wrong they have consequences and we are already adults. In this coalition, as long as the partner continues to support you, everything doesn’t matter. That is the question, the legal uncertainty that is being generated with the reform of the Criminal Code.
Minutes before, also in the congressional press conference room, the spokesman for the Socialists, Patxi López, had ruled out that the reform proposal, which is still being negotiated with its partners, would start its parliamentary process next week. “This is a magnificent law, but it is having unwanted effects that must be avoided,” he concluded.
Faced with the opposition’s requests for resignations, the former lehendakari maintains that the “responsibility is collective.” “In this case it is the responsibility of having a law that represents an enormous advance to protect women,” he said.
The Gordian knot continues to go through the divergences around the question of consent. While the socialites assure that with the proposal of the Ministry of Justice this would not be touched, from United We Can maintain that “it represents a return to the previous legislation” by distinguishing again, they assure, between attacks with or without intimidation or violence.
In this sense, the spokesman for the Confederal group of United We Can, Pablo Echenique, has pointed out that the purples are open to reaching an agreement to change this rule in regard to its penological scale and in the context of “protecting the unity of the coalition government. However, he closes the door again to the socialist proposal that the purples have on their table since last December 8.
Another of the Executive’s partners, the PNV, returned this morning to be in favor of a reform that corrects the undesired effects of the norm. However, its parliamentary spokesman, Aitor Esteban, has criticized how the government of Pedro Sánchez is managing the reform, reproaching both the PSOE and Podemos for the fact that they are airing “in the media” their discrepancies regarding the best way to resolve the problem. “If they have differences, let them fix them,” warned the PNV spokesman in Congress.
Esteban has also made the Executive ugly by not addressing the reform of the text together with the rest of the groups and has ensured that once they receive the proposal they will have to study it carefully. “We want to consult with judges and other sectors of civil society.” Basque nationalists have been joining the voices advocating for tweaking the law for weeks now to prevent the trickle of sentence reductions and releases of convicted sexual offenders from continuing. “We have manifested ourselves in a coherent way since we saw how the law was being interpreted.”
The opposition calls for resignations
Vox, on the other hand, has returned this morning to charge harshly against the Executive and request resignations due to the failure of the regulation promoted by the Ministry of Equality. A reproach that has been extended to the rest of the groups that voted in favor of the ‘only yes is yes’ law. “They knew it, and despite this they voted for this law, knowing that rapists and pedophiles were going to take to the streets,” Espinosa de los Monteros pointed out before calling those who supported the text “irresponsible.”
The Vox leader has also alluded to the words yesterday by the Minister of Education, Pilar Alegría, in which the socialist leader assured that these consequences of the ‘only yes is yes’ Law “could not be foreseen.” The parliamentary spokesman recalled how his formation did warn about it by presenting an amendment to the entirety.
Ciudadanos, for their part, has also appeared today in Congress to recriminate the Executive for its attitude. «The Government arrives very late correcting its bungling of the law. We have been demanding it for months,” said Guillermo Díaz, orange coordinator of the parliamentary group, who in turn has demanded that Sánchez dismiss Irene Montero, Minister of Equality. The orange formation was one of the groups that supported the norm, although it has been warning for weeks about the need to modify it.
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