The bill announced by the Popular Party to “rectify” and “improve” the law of only yes is yes ran aground in Genoa. Outside the doors, the PP’s discourse against the norm, the Government and the Ministry of Equality in general, and against Minister Irene Montero in particular, is firm and forceful. Behind closed doors, the popular ones assume the complexity of the matter and prolong sine die the presentation of an alternative text that forces them to position themselves on key aspects such as consent or the unification of the criminal types of abuse and aggression.
A month has passed since the PP launched a parliamentary offensive against the Law for the Comprehensive Guarantee of Sexual Freedom, known as the law of only yes is yes, which would culminate in a bill in the Congress of Deputies. But the wording of the text has stalled. “Work is being done on it, it has not been abandoned. But it is complex,” sources from the national leadership admit to Public.
“If it were to correct four commas, it would already be done,” says another important leader of the PP. A reflection that completely clashes with the continuous messages of the popular, who have built a whole story against the Government for maintaining the norm without changes. Elías Bendodo, general coordinator of the PP, even spoke of the Executive’s support for the law, once the first sentence reductions were known, was going to produce a “call effect” to sexual offenders.
But the alternative proposal (to the PP of the “proposals, proposals and proposals” that Núñez Feijóo wants) they still do not have on the table. In addition, from the national direction the position on one of the central issues of the law has been changing: suppressing the differentiation between abuse and sexual assault.
From asking for the distinction between abuse and aggression, to doubting
A month ago, the PP asked to return to this distinction of types that the law of the only yes is yes. “It was much more serious to maintain the differentiation and maintain the penalties as they were established until this law came into force. Without a doubt, if we had maintained that, we would not be talking about what we are talking about today,” he said on November 17. the spokesperson for the PP in Congress, and number two of Genoa, Cuca Gamarra.
Now, up to three different sources from the national leadership of the PP consulted by this newspaper refuse to clarify whether they maintain this position and limit themselves to guaranteeing that there will be “no setback” for women’s rights. They also recognize that the “spirit” with which the rule was drafted is good – “the intentions could be good” – and that, in any case, their proposal will be aimed at improving it.
On the other substantial aspect of the law of the only yes is yes (so much so that it has given the name to the text), the consent, Genoa is not pronounced either and prolongs the internal debate, party sources say: “Everything is being worked on.” Those who lead this task are Cuca Gamarra and Carmen Navarro, Vice Secretary of Social Policy of the PP.
Feijóo and the elusiveness of internal debates
From Feijóo’s environment they justify that this expansion in a matter that they have been using as a battering ram against the Government for weeks responds not only to the “complexity” that it entails, but also to the many simultaneous “foci” that have been opened. The certain thing is that the nucleus of the president of the PP has turned off the debate on the substance of the law, even at the cost of entering into contradictions with themselves, as with the unification of criminal types.
Another uncomfortable ideological debate in the PP Senate that Feijóo postpones. It was the deputy Marta González herself, in charge of defending the vote against the law in Congress last May, who recognized in her speech that she had an internal debate in her party about whether or not to support the text . “We cannot support this law because it is an electoral fanfare of Podemos”, she finished justifying herself. In Genoa they continue to work on the alternative, once they have recognized the “good intentions” of the legislator.
