He affirms that in this electoral year there are two alternatives, his government or the PP that defends the interests of some powerful
MADRID, 11 (.)
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has today placed those who oppose his Government’s social policies on the extreme right and has warned that when they fail to “block these advances through democratic means, because the citizens turn their backs on them, what they do is oppose democracy and resort to assaulting democratic institutions.”
This is what he said during his speech at the inauguration of the UGT confederal union action days, at the union headquarters in Madrid. There, after recalling the role of the unions in combating the Franco dictatorship and the contribution of the workers in achieving democracy, he referred to what happened in Brazil last Sunday, when a large group of Bolsonaro supporters stormed the Parliament of this country.
“Let’s look at what happened in Brazil”, Pedro Sánchez pointed out to recall that “two days after” the Workers’ Party won the elections in Brazil “there was a coup attempt led by the extreme right”, which he recalls, has pointed to what happened with the assault on the US Congress.
Thus, he reported that they began “with lies, branding the democratic government elected by the Brazilians in this case as illegitimate, it continues with an escalation of verbal violence, insults, tension and an attempt to polarize and ends with the assault on democratic institutions”.
Precisely for this reason, Pedro Sánchez considers that Lula da Silva’s party, the Labor Party, “is the only barrier that stops fascism from its conquest for power.”
RECOGNIZE THE EXTREME RIGHT
Having said this and already being located in Spain, he has challenged to use “a method that does not fail” to recognize an ultra-rightist. It is about, he has said, what “they always oppose to any social advance”.
As such, he has cited the opposition exercised in Spain against the policies of his Government. According to Sánchez, a far-right is the one who opposes the rise of the SMI; to the increase in pensions; to reduce job insecurity; he opposes the IMV saying that it is a paguita; he opposes fair taxation; he opposes equality policies between men and women and denies the scientific evidence that we are facing a climate emergency.
“When they fail to block these advances through democratic means, because the citizens turn their backs on them, what they do is oppose democracy and resort to assaulting democratic institutions,” the chief executive specified without explicitly mentioning any party in concrete.
HE CONTRASTS HIS MODEL TO THAT OF THE PP
Sánchez stressed that in a “so electoral” year that is beginning, the Government is going to follow the same line of the “last three years” and is going to continue “dignifying” pensions, increasing the minimum wage and “continuing to protect people from walking”.
In his opinion, this is a “crucial” year for Spain in which citizens are going to have to choose between two alternatives. On the one hand, that of his Government, which, as he has defended, protects employment and family income and provides “all the tools of the State” for this purpose, and on the other, a model “anchored in defending the interests of some powerful “, in reference to the PP, which intends to use the same recipes as during the previous financial crisis of “every man for himself when things go wrong”, as he has defined it.
In this sense, Sánchez has emphasized the situation in the country a decade ago, in January 2013, in the midst of a crisis and with a PP government in La Moncloa, and he has contrasted it with the current moment, in which there is a better economic situation .
THE SITUATION A DECADE AGO
Thus, he reported that at that time there were almost 6 million unemployed, Spain contributed one in three unemployed people in the European Union, there had been a collapse in consumption and in the culture sector “due to the increase in VAT”, the closure of emergencies in rural areas and in some “conservative” autonomous communities, the pharmaceutical co-payment began.
He has also mentioned the massive departure of young people, the cuts in science and research and corruption, as the main topic that marked the news. “In that January 2013, the unemployment rate exceeded 26% and 57% of young people under 25 years of age were unemployed. That is where we come from,” she stressed.
In this line, Sánchez has defended the labor reform approved by the coalition Executive and has contrasted it with the one carried out by the PP, which in his opinion did not stop the “bleeding” of unemployment, did not reduce the precariousness of employment and also sank the wages.
GALA VILLAGE OF PP AND VOX
On pensions, he has valued the 8.5% increase approved for this year, which places the average pension at “1,259 euros”, as he has pointed out” and has reproached the PP that with its system of revaluation the average amount received by retirees would be only “1,101 euros per month”.
Sánchez has also defended that at this moment in Europe there is a consensus that these types of policies were a failure and “there is only one French village” on the right, “encouraged by the extreme right”, in reference to PP and Vox, ” who cling to the neoliberal doctrine”.
Thus, he has reproached them for “not having learned anything from that disaster” and has accused them of continuing to support recipes for “austericide” and fiscal inequality, cuts in public services and measures to facilitate dismissal. As well as unregulated markets and an “imbalanced” distribution of the burdens derived from the crisis to the detriment of the working class.
At the end of the act in which he was together with the general secretary of the UGT, Pepe Álvarez, Sánchez had a mass bath among the attendees, mostly union delegates, and he spent around twenty minutes greeting and taking photos with them.
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