Ángel Collado
The internal crisis in Pedro Sánchez’s coalition government over the “only yes is yes” law is festering without risk of rupture (no one will leave any post), but is paralysing the cabinet until the pending changes are made.
The ministers of the socialist sector of the Executive, Reyes Maroto, head of Industry, and Carolina Darias, of Health, are waiting to be relieved to run full time as PSOE candidates in the municipal elections in May as candidates for the mayoralties of Madrid and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria respectively.
Elected and appointed by Sánchez to their new posts last November, and confirmed by the PSOE in December, Maroto and Darias are already campaigning from their respective ministries, in the Council of Ministers and at party events at weekends. They are making the most of their status, resources and public projection as heads of the Executive in their race for the mayoralties, without their leader having been willing or able to find room to appoint their substitutes or replacements.
The President of the Government is oblivious to criticism from the opposition, who denounce him for giving an advantage to his female municipal candidates and limiting the full dedication that members of the Executive are supposed to have. In Madrid, he personally led the party event to launch Maroto’s pre-campaign to begin this month, on the 4th of last month, without having made any changes to the composition of the cabinet either before or after the event.
The rally had a farewell and endorsement speech by Sánchez. In addition to the usual “we are going to miss you very much”, the socialist leader stressed that his still minister has his full support to complete the task entrusted to him: to oust the current PP mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, from the City Council of the Spanish capital.
The mayoralty of Madrid is the PSOE’s main objective in the municipal elections on 28 May. Unlike in the Community of Madrid, where polls show Isabel Díaz Ayuso as the sure winner, in the City Council the socialists believe that they have the margin to lead a left-wing majority after the elections, like the one that gave the mayoralty to Manuela Carmena in 2015, but this time with their candidate in front.
The Minister of Industry made her pre-campaign debut with an improvised speech in which she showed little knowledge of the administration she aspires to govern. In between rallies and interviews, she counts her speeches in blunders: she speaks of 25 districts in Madrid when in reality there are 21, she promises reductions in a bus pass that disappeared in the 1990s or investment projects that already exist.
The PP took advantage of Maroto’s words to remind that she is forced to run in the electoral race and needs time to catch up, while the PSOE considered her departure from the government to be imminent, along with that of Darias. It seemed a matter of days, but the crisis in Sánchez’s coalition over the penultimate fight between socialists and podemitas over the “only yes is yes” law also delays the socialists’ general pre-electoral calendar.
A week after Maroto’s official launch in Madrid, Podemos, led by Equality Minister Irene Montero, still does not accept the correction that the socialist group has presented to its star law, which has already benefited more than 500 sex offenders.
The only and fundamental point of agreement on both sides is to repeat that the coalition is not in danger. There will be no dismissals or resignations over a legal nonsense pushed through by the entire government and approved in Congress last August by the very large majority that made up the entire left plus the Ciudadanos group for the occasion.
Sánchez is now trying to limit the consequences of the internal war within his government and to move it to the parliamentary procedure of the counter-reform by means of urgency. The 8th March is the great feminist festival and could be another date that reactivates competition among the left for the cause.
The president of the government has been caught by the bull to make the ministerial reshuffle with an eye to 28 May and now has to seek a parenthesis of truce in his coalition in order to regain the initiative with a renovation that can only be done in the part of his real competence: the socialist sector of the cabinet.
