Belarra, to the PSOE: "You can say that you are a feminist, but if you vote for the ‘only yes is yes’ reform with the PP, you are giving a pig for a poke"

The Minister for Social Rights and Secretary General of Unidas Podemos, Ione Belarra, criticized this Sunday that the PSOE, its coalition partner in the Government, agrees to vote on the reform of the “only yes is yes” law together with the main opposition parties of the right. “You can say that you are the most feminist party, but if on Tuesday you are going to vote on the reform of the ‘only yes is yes’ law to return to the Penal Code of the Pack with PP and Vox, they are giving you a pig in a poke”, Bellara said.

The UP leader made these statements in the presence of the party’s founder, Pablo Iglesias, and his spokesman in Congress, Pablo Echenique, during the presentation of his book ‘Memories of a combat pilot’, in Madrid. The spokesman has asked the PSOE what he will do next Tuesday, on the eve of 8M, in the event that the reform goes ahead, if they are going to add their applause “to those of the PP and those of the fetal heartbeat”, in reference to VOX , who have already given their support to the proposal. “What is the PSOE going to do?” Echenique has insisted.

The statements by the leaders of Podemos come just one day after the Minister for Equality, Irene Montero, expressed her willingness to “give an answer” to the reductions in sentences that some judges are handing down in application of the new law. Montero stated this Saturday that this response “has to be feminist” and she added that there is still room for an agreement with the PSOE.

“We have to reach an agreement so that on March 7 the return to the Penal Code of the Pack is not voted in Congress,” Montero defended. The minister also asked not to give PP and Vox “the opportunity to add their votes to the PSOE to go back on the rights that we have won in this legislature.”

The PSOE Secretary for Equality, Andrea Fernández, has assured for her part that the processing of the reform of the ‘only yes is yes’ law will allow “untangling the mess” caused by the judicial interpretations of the norm that have favored discounts to sexual offenders. In an act this Sunday in Portugalete, Fernández regretted that Unidas Podemos is “a partner that on many occasions does not accompany”.

The deputy general secretary of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero, has also advocated this Sunday to correct the law of ‘only yes is yes’ to avoid “unnecessary pain” for all victims. Montero has lamented the “undesired consequences” of the application of the norm and has stressed that the objective of the law is to “put consent at the center of the law.”

“The law has had unintended consequences and the sentences for the aggressors have been lowered, and when the PSOE sees that in practice a law does not correspond to it, it rectifies it so that no one lowers their sentences for such serious crimes,” added the Also Minister of Finance.

The socialist proposal to reform the ‘only yes is yes’ law will be debated next Tuesday in Congress. After several weeks, the two parties in the Government have not reached an agreement to iron out their differences regarding the best way to strengthen one of the most emblematic reforms of the coalition.

This Thursday, Echenique told the media in Congress that “the proposed law returns to the Penal Code of La Manada and hopefully we will not get to that unedifying spectacle. We are working so that this does not happen, but we are not going to vote with the PP to return to the Penal Code of La Manada. If that moment arrives, we will try by all means that it does not arrive, we will vote against it ”.