Podemos is strengthening its role in government after a tense year in which the coalition managed to push through a broad legislative agenda despite a “right-wing coup strategy”. The secretary general of the formation, Ione Bellara, published this Thursday the balance of the year, in which he condemned “a very small but very privileged elite” that wants to continue to demonstrate “that it commands more than the president and the parliament”. . “We, as democrats, have an obligation to stop and tell them clearly that in Spain no one can be above the law and democracy,” warned the Minister of Social Rights and the 2030 Agenda in a political review of the year. .
In a video released this Thursday, Bellara touted the social gains the government has made not only in the past year, but since the start of a difficult legislature that is now entering its final year. “We are proud that we stood up and that the Trans Law is a reality that just seemed impossible a few months ago, just as it seemed impossible to raise the minimum wage, put a cap on gas, lower the price of electricity. Either inflation or the fact that domestic workers are entitled to unemployment,” he summed up as the main achievements of being in the executive branch of United We Can.
The leader of the formation also mentioned the renewal of the anti-crisis shield, which came out of the Council of Ministers on Tuesday after intense negotiations in the government. United we can get the PSOE to extend tenancy contracts for six months so that landlords cannot raise the price on tenants who want to renew their rent. “The social shield, which also includes that commuter and medium-distance tickets will continue to be free until 2023, as well as a 50% reduction in urban transport, metro or buses,” he recalled.
Bellara believes that Unidas Podemos has gone “where no one from the transformative left has gone in 80 years”, but their presence in government also serves to verify the existence of an elite that wants to continue to demonstrate that it is worth more. The President, the Parliament and the voice of the citizens.
“Our adversaries are powerful and they are not only politicians, although they all do politics,” he said, referring to the audio recordings of private conversations between journalist Antonio GarcÃa Ferreiras and Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo that emerged this summer and that revealed the origin of false information to the detriment of Podemos. for the purpose of application. “The accompanying corrupt journalism, even if it is crude, which deliberately publishes lies so that a project like ours does not work, is also one of the main democratic problems we have in our country,” he believes.
The secretary general of Podemos believed that the right is immersed in a “coup strategy” that will not stop, but will worsen, as seen in what he said was an expired Constitutional Court decision. To stop the parliamentary process of reform, by which the government intended to unblock the renewal of the guarantee court itself. According to him, “what the political and judicial media right cannot support is that Podemos is in the government.”
For this reason, Belara argued that the executive must now promote a reform that allows for the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), which has been blocked for four years by the Popular Party. “We need to develop a model of council renewal that adapts to the new Spanish political reality and leave a system that was created mainly to measure bipartisanship,” he said, according to a proposal his formation circulated at the time. with the PSOE and has now been resurrected to replace the majority system by which the Congress renews it with the members of the governing body of the respective judges. Unidas Podemos wants to move from the qualified majority system as it is now to an absolute majority and a more representative system.
“It is imperative that we end the hijacking of institutions by the People’s Party, which is only trying to protect its corrupt and achieve through the courts what it failed to achieve in the elections,” he said.
pending laws
The minister also took advantage of the balance of his year to remind the PSOE legislative initiatives that were part of the agreement they signed in the coalition agreement at the beginning of the legislature and which have not yet been implemented. One of them is the repeal of the so-called “law of understanding” approved by the government of Mariano Rajoy, about which there has been recent progress in its processing in Congress, but what particularly worries the minority partner is the housing law.
This norm has already come out of the Council of Ministers at the initiative of the Ministry of Transport, which depends on the PSOE, but so far its parliamentary process has not progressed, as United We Can wants to introduce deeper regulation of the rental market. “These years have shown us that it is better to help, which very often happens in authentic bureaucratic labyrinths, is a violent intervention in strategic issues,” said the minister, who cited the intervention on the rent price as an example. The government stepped in during the pandemic and allowed average rents to fall by 4.5%. “Intervention means tipping the balance in favor of the people, almost always against the interests of large multinationals such as vulture funds or energy companies,” he said.
Source: El Diario
