The shadow of the controversy over the reform of the law of only yes is yes promised to settle on the appearance of the President of the Government in the Senate this Tuesday. The discrepancies aired in the last hours by the government coalition on this issue, added to the support of the PP of Alberto Núñez Feijóo for a modification of the law proposed by the PSOE in the face of the trickle of reductions in sentences for convicted rapists, threatened to clouding one of the parliamentary appointments with which Pedro Sánchez is usually more comfortable: face to face with the opposition leader, without a seat in Congress.
This matter did not disappear either inside or outside the Senate chamber, but the leader of the Executive took advantage of his appearance on the economic measures adopted to deal with the consequences caused by the war in Ukraine to announce the new increase in the Minimum Interprofessional Wage (SMI) , agreed hours before in a meeting of the second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, with the unions.
The announcement, they say in the Popular Party, did not catch them by surprise: “It was already known that he was going to do this,” say sources from the national leadership. Feijóo had already given samples from the rostrum of how they thought of Genoa and accused the Prime Minister of “holding the press conference that the Minister of Labor had to hold.” “You have run out of a press conference,” he snapped at Yolanda Díaz.
The agreement, from which the employers withdrew, involves raising the minimum wage by 8% until climbing in 2023 to 1,080 euros gross per month in 14 payments (currently it stands at 1,000 euros). The announcement was preceded by the arrest of Sánchez in the “loss of purchasing power” due to the “neoliberal” policies applied by the PP in the end of the 2008 crisis. As for this latest increase in the SMI, from the team of Feijóo criticize that it was done without the employers. “What we don’t know is if the companies can assume that 8%,” sources from Genoa pointed out in the corridors of the Senate.
Thus, it was not until the turn of reply to the leader of the PP, in his second intervention, when Sánchez made reference to the change in the law of the only yes is yes. The Prime Minister acknowledged that it was “a technical question that does not reflect the will of the Executive” and that he hoped to approve the reform in Congress to avoid “unwanted effects” of the rule. Feijóo’s attacks for the reduction of sentences that some sentence revisions have led to were not few, nor were they soft.
The leader of the PP went so far as to say of Sánchez that “he will go down in history for being the first president who took a step back in the fight for classical feminism in Spain.” He also asked her “What kind of feminism justifies knowingly lowering the sentences of hundreds of sexual offenders?” and assured that the law “is not the result of an error” but “the result of his insensitivity and irrelevance as president.” Feijóo is willing to take advantage of all the political revenue that he can squeeze out of the controversy by law of the only yes is yes.
Sánchez, grown in the replica
Sánchez waited for the reply to tiptoe through the gap that has opened up in the Executive and, as he does in every parliamentary intervention, to appease his adversary. The President of the Government grows and it shows. From Moncloa they value the face to face like this: “He has eaten it with potatoes.” And from Genoa they say that his tone “only shows despair” and that he has been “revealing” the “fear” of the polls.
The truth is that the socialist leader dispatched himself at ease against Feijóo. He reviewed his year at the head of the PP- “Every time you open your mouth, the bread goes up,” he snapped at him-, he criticized his latest proposals, such as the one that governs the list with the most votes, he said that “it did not give more than yes” and blamed Eduardo Zaplana, Rodrigo Rato or Jaume Matas. After this, the president of the PP went up to the rostrum for the second time, visibly nervous, made a mistake in his speech and responded to Sánchez like this: “This intervention has had less height and less quality than the leaders of the opposition have had in Galicia”.
“The campaign is going to be long for us,” summed up a senator at the end of the duel between Sánchez and Feijóo. The first of the year.
