Moncloa asks for “serenity” and “temperance” but the president will not attend this Wednesday the act of Equality for 8-M with Irene Montero after doing so for the last two years
The coalition government exhibited this Tuesday that it has entered into a phase of internal decomposition with the vote, totally opposite, of the processing of the reform of the law of ‘only yes is yes’, which the PSOE has registered against the criteria of United We Can and which it has managed to promote thanks to the support of pp. There was no doubt that the purples were not going to back him. The discrepancy between the partners on the scope and convenience of this modification has been publicly ventilated for weeks. That did not prevent a bitter parliamentary debate, a televised fight, which leaves serious political wounds within the Executive and which also dragged down the parliamentary groups.
Most of the damage seems irreparable. The crisis does not end in a fracture but it is not possible to hide the permanent limp. To alleviate it, so that the decline is not so evident, the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has asked to lower the voltage level and that the ministers do not enter into the fight. “The order is temperance”, assure socialist sources of the Executive. “It has not been pleasant, that excess was not necessary”, they highlight the harsh intervention of the purple deputy, Lucía Muñoz, but “we are not going to give it more value”. “We are not going to fall for any provocation”they underline.
The socialist part of the government so try to play it down to the concrete fact of the vote because public disagreements, they recall, have been constant in recent weeks. But they recognize that resented the internal cohesion and that this Tuesday at the meeting of the Council of Ministers there was more “tension”. “They are upset and it shows“, they comment on the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, and that of Social Rights, Ione Belarra. They have faced this matter from a “personal” point of view, as if their ability to make laws had been questioned, they explain from the PSOE.
The decision, they insist, is to “turn the page” because there are many more things ahead and because Moncloa’s “priority” was to offer a response to the more than 700 reductions in sentences for sexual offenders and almost 80 releases due to the entry into force of the law of ‘only yes is yes’. But, despite the fact that the will of the PSOE is not to continue feeding this controversy, the problems continue on the table.
Sánchez will not attend this Wednesday the institutional act organized by the Ministry of Equality on the occasion of 8-M, as if it has happened in the last two years. A fact that adds to the absence this Tuesday, at the press conference after the Council of Ministers, of Irene Montero herself, on the eve of Women’s Day, since her team has not participated in the drafting of the new law of parity presented by Nadia Calviño.
The damage was also visible in the reaction of the socialist group to the speech in the rostrum of the Podemos deputy, who accused them of “wanting to return to the ordeal of evidence, to a model that made us show a little wound and then test if it had been produced by a rape, a model in which it should be normal for our boyfriend to penetrate us while we sleep“, he defended. A tone that motivated later statements by Patxi López, in the halls of Congress. An intervention, he said, that “accuses the PSOE of agreeing with the PP and Vox, when they know it is a lie, and of returning to the The Penal Code of the Pack is unpresentable”. Hours later in the SER, the spokesman again exhibited his discomfort but defended that the only way to overcome the situation was “to all exercise responsibility and abandon the verbal escalation”.
The impossible balance of the vice president
In addition, the crisis produces other consequences because the effects of the law of only yes is yes and the angry reaction of Podemos has put Yolanda Díaz in a difficult situation, more in favor of admitting mistakes and approaching positions with the PSOE to reach a agreed solution. But the castling of the purples and their harsh criticism of the majority partner of the Government collided flatly with these theses, in ways typical of Podemos that the second vice president never liked, considering that this strategy further clouded the relationship in the coalition and hindered a possible agreement.
The strong distancing of Díaz with the ministers of Podemos was pictured in the hemicycle of Congresswith the image of Irene Montero and Ione Belarra in absolute solitude on the blue bench of the Government while the socialist proposal was being debated. The second vice president and theoretical leader of the space was absent, avoiding showing support for the Minister of Equality. She was not supported by the rest of the ministers of United We Can, nor the head of Consumption, Alberto Garzon, nor that of Universities, Joan Subiratsnone of the socialist holders or the president of the Government.
Díaz, who had advocated until the last moment to reach an understanding, was visibly upset upon arrival at the Chamber late Tuesday for voting: “I’m sorry, we should never have gotten here & rdquor;, he brandished, in a reproach both to the socialist wing and to his own colleagues in the parliamentary group. While Diaz was apologizing, in the purple rows continued to incite the socialists. Parliamentary Speaker, Pablo Echenique, published a message on networks at the last minute redoubling the offensive against the coalition partner. “The vote of shame. The PSOE votes with the PP to return to the Penal Code of the Pack and those of the fetal heartbeat helped them with an abstention.”
Impromptu meeting of Montero and Díaz
Despite the differences, a few minutes after starting to vote, there was a meeting in extremis between Irene Montero, Yolanda Díaz and Enrique Santiago in a room of Parliament, from which they came out visibly serious. Once the vote was completed, the Minister for Equality left Congress avoiding the press, displaying her discomfort with a very serious gesture and contained anger. The lack of harmony between the two referents of United We Can came back to the fore, but the disagreements are not only internally. They are also clearly perceived in the Council of Ministers.
From the socialist wing they point out that Belarra and Montero take this type of disagreement “on a personal level & rdquor ;, without distinguishing the political grievance from the human one, while showing more harmony with the second vice president, who has “another way of doing politics & rdquor; and that “he knows how to accommodate differences more normally & rdquor ;.
In the short term, even though Sánchez’s motto is not to go to the clash, it seems difficult to redirect the situation. The two partners go to the 8-M demonstration deeply confronted, and in the case of the PSOE, with the warning of Pablo Iglesias that they can find protests against their reform. And it is also expected that the parliamentary process for its final approval will continue for a month or a month and a half. With regional and municipal elections at the end of May and general ones in December, in which the two partners have to address their electorate, nothing points to a reconciliation.