The Law Patch Yes is yes that the PSOE promoted this week in Congress has ended up generating a tear in the government coalition that is impossible to mend despite the fact that both the Socialists and their partners from United We Can do not consider their pact broken. At least, until after the municipal and regional elections on May 28, because many things will depend on the melody that comes out of the polls that day. Before that date, a break in the coalition would have devastating effects for both sectors of the Executive. And they both know it.
What happened last Tuesday opened the biggest crisis that the Executive has experienced since its pact. The Lower House took the first step to reform the star regulations of the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, and did so by showing an abysmal fracture. The PSOE carried out its proposal (231 votes in favour) thanks to the support of PP, Ciudadanos, PNV, PdCat, the Regionalist Party of Cantabria and the Canary Islands Coalition.
On the opposite side, Unidas Podemos, accompanied by ERC, Bildu, the CUP and BNG, voted no to add 56 rejections and in the abstention (56 votes opted for this alternative) forces as disparate as Vox, Compromís and Más País took refuge. The purple formation suffered a severe defeat in their quest to preserve their law intact.
In Congress, but also in the days prior to the consideration of the reform, Podemos dedicated a whole rosary of adjectives to its partners in general and to the president, Pedro Sánchez, in particular, speaking of betrayal of women, cowardice, Rancid machismo and also “a bunch of fascists.” With this last expression is how the spokesperson for Podemos, Lucía Muñoz, defined those who approved to modify the Law of only yes is yes in the terms in which the PSOE raised it, already putting between Ferraz and his collaborators in the Executive no longer distances, but a huge confrontation.
“What there is is a handful of fascists who intend to return to silence and guilt, to having to resist and demonstrate with skin wounds that we have been raped, so that if they don’t kill us they don’t believe us,” Muñoz rubbed all the Contrary to the current norm.
Sánchez was portrayed as someone “whose legs tremble” in the face of pressure from the right and his men were accused by Irene Montero and Ione Belarra of “abandoning women”
The coalition is mortally wounded by this stake, but so is Montero. Completely disavowed in the only yes is yes and ignored in the new parity law, about which she was not even consulted, the head of Equality with whom Sánchez once shared dozens of photos and smiles to polish her more feminist profile, seems doomed to ostracism. The image of her and Belarra, alone on the blue bench of Congress, is very illustrative.
In any country with an established democratic tradition, this internal division would lead to a breach of the pact or to immediate resignations. Do you remember that in February of last year there were up to four resignations of ministers in one day in the British Government of Boris Johnson due to the so-called Partygate? Comparisons are hateful, as the old saying goes.
Despite the open war, the possibility of a break occurring has been ruled out both from the PSOE, where Sánchez has said that “it is not contemplated” – and has had to specify that he supports all his ministers “including the Equality »-, as by United We Can.
Along the same lines, the Minister of the Presidency, Relations with the Parliament and Democratic Memory, Félix Bolaños, acknowledged that the debate “was not the best in the history of these Parliaments”, although he was convinced that the climate between PSOE and Podemos It will improve and stressed that “there is a government for a while.”
“The coalition government is not at risk but the rights of women,” Montero said, while maintaining his belligerent tone. “What is bad news for this country is that the PSOE has joined hands with the PP to start the path that can lead us to return to the Penal Code of the Pack.”
The Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra, admitted that the coalition partners exchanged “big words”, although she agreed with her party colleague that “the serious thing” was the PSOE’s alliance with the PP to, for the first time, apply an “involution of women’s rights.”
The second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, less lacerating than her colleagues, demanded “responsibility from everyone.”
Now, the unknown that remains to be resolved is whether a government “in decomposition and with assisted breathing”, as Feijóo’s PP already defines it, can reliably hold out until the end of the legislature.
