The reform of the ‘gag law’, one of the most representative promises of the coalition government, will not be carried out in this legislature, except for a last-minute miracle, after the ERC and Bildu voted against on Tuesday in the commission of the Congress of Deputies that ruled on the project . The two pro-independence groups preferred to play all or nothing rather than allow the modification of 40 of the 54 articles that they wanted to change to go ahead, which, without a doubt, would have represented an advance in freedoms that restricted the law approved in 2015 by the absolute majority of the PP of Mariano Rajoy. From the moment of its promulgation, the law was highly contested not only by the left but also by numerous civil and social organizations, including professional associations of journalists, who saw in the new regulations an intolerable limitation of fundamental rights such as information and that of manifestation.
It is therefore difficult to understand that, having reached an agreement between the parties that make up the majority of the investiture to modify 40 of these articles, the two aforementioned formations preferred that the reform of the citizen security law decay and remain as approved by the PP . The ultimate reason was that aspects that ERC and Bildu consider central, such as the prohibition of rubber ballsthe reduction of sanctions for disobedience to authority or interruption of hot returns of migrants at the borders. No matter how essential these ends are, and they are, it is seen that on this occasion the electoral objectives have prevailed over the predisposition to take advantage of the real possibilities of achieving practical results that would benefit the whole of society. It wasn’t that hard. Supporting or abstaining from voting on the opinion would have allowed the parliamentary process to continue of a reform that included advances such as the reduction of the identification time at the police station from six to two hours, the guarantee of the right to demonstrate without prior communication when it is peaceful or the elimination of sanctions for taking or disseminating images of the actions of the police officers. Perhaps verifying the mistake made is what led ERC this Wednesday to announce that it will present a bill that includes the aspects that it wanted to have satisfied on Tuesday and that, if it goes ahead, could allow the reform process to resume and who knows if your final approval.
The failure of the ‘gag law’ reform led to the visualization once again of the existing confrontation in the government coalition, but also within the United We Can. While the leaders of Podemos, Minister Ione Belarra, Pablo Echenique, and even Pablo Iglesias, blamed the PSOE for the fiasco, the general secretary of the PCE, Enrique Santiago, who is UP spokesman in the commission and voted in favor of the reform, He came out in defense of the agreement and recalled that the ‘gag law’ does not say a single word about rubber bullets. A touch on Podemos and a cape on the PSOE, which is undoubtedly uncomfortable in this matter because it suffers pressure from the police forces, and has limits to how far (also in its case with the weight of the electoral context) it wants or can arrive.