The law of only yes is yes will be reformed by the Government and the initiative will come from the Ministry of Equality itself, directed by Irene Montero. The pressure of public opinion due to the hundreds of sentence reductions practiced by the judges in application of the new norm has twisted the hand of Equality, initially reluctant to retouch its own norm.
In an election year, the majority partner, the PSOE, was not willing for one of the Government's greatest advances in the protection of women to turn around and become a battering ram against the coalition government. The growing concern of the Socialists, but also of Moncloa, have ended up convincing the Ministry of Equality that some rectification of the text was essential. The situation was hardly sustainable for Igualdad: the PSOE was willing to impose the reform if the Podemos ministry did not take the initiative.
The Socialists have convinced the minority partner that the lesser evil is to retouch the norm, although there is no conviction that the rectification will take effect, since all criminal types contemplate sentencing forks and the last word on its application will continue to be held by the judges . However, there are not many expectations about the possibility of stopping the bleeding of sentence reductions.
The coalition government is convinced that doing nothing in the face of the growing concern about the application of the new law – which cuts the criminal offenses applicable to sexual attacks from three to two, in application of the Istanbul agreement – and the cut of convictions is much worse than continuing to endure the downpour of criticism.
To avoid a major crisis, the PSOE will allow the Ministry of Equality itself to promote the reform. The decision of the Government of Pedro Sánchez has made the minority partner get down to work, and the Ministry of Equality and the Vice Presidency of Labor, led by Yolanda Díaz, work in coordination. That is the matter that floated in the air of the plenary when Vice President Díaz and Minister Irene Montero were photographed together leaving the chamber. Neither Equality nor Labor, however, have wanted to advance where the reform of the law will go. At the moment, there is no firm proposal.
The matter, however, was not addressed on Wednesday morning at the meeting of the United Podemos confederal space, led by Yolanda Díaz and attended by the two Podemos ministers, Irene Montero and Ion Belarra, as well as IU, the PCE and the common ones, in which the sending of tanks to Ukraine and the pension reform were addressed. Given the nature of criminal law, whose interpretation is always at the discretion of the judges -especially in the case of an adaptation that reduces the criminal types from three to two-, the reform does not aspire to stop judicial applications for the benefit of the accused, but it does to limit the reputational damage of the Government for not acting against the almost three hundred aggressors who have benefited to some extent from the new comprehensive law against sexual violence.
The socialist imposition, however, has not had an impact on the environment of the Unidas Podemos space, which since the turn of the year has been going through weeks of calm, far from the internal tension in which it lived immersed in the last quarter of 2022, after the hectic University Autumn of Podemos. It escapes no one that in the reconfiguration of the electoral space, the political reputation of the Minister of Equality is key, since she is the head of the poster and the first political asset of Podemos against the rest of the partners that Díaz aspires to bring together under the Sumar platform. In this sense, and being the face of the feminist legislative agenda of the coalition Executive, Montero will be the one who defends the adjustments that he makes to his own norm, preventing the socialists from being the ones who urge the rectification. Because they were willing to. Even wishing it.
