Podemos spokeswoman Isa Serra said this Monday that vetoing the Minister for Equality, Irene Montero, on the Sumar al 23-J lists is a “political error” and “a terrible message for society and for the left”. and he has insisted that his formation will continue on the platform of the second vice president of the Government, but the veto must be withdrawn. For her part, the leader of Sumar, Yolanda DÃaz, refused to comment on the issue and assured that what the Spaniards are waiting for are solutions to “real problems.”
In statements to the media, Serra stressed that “there is still time” until Monday, when the deadline for submitting the lists for the 23-J general elections ends, to “fix this error”: “We ask Yolanda DÃaz to withdraw the veto”, Serra settled shortly after the former vice president of the Government and former leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, warned DÃaz that, “if he does not rectify”, in a few years the veto on Montero “will weigh heavily on him”.
“This is a political error, but also a terrible message to society. It is a message of a veto, precisely, to the brave, to those who confront power and to those who, despite hate campaigns and manipulations , have led our country to the forefront of feminist rights and that is why we insist that Yolanda DÃaz withdraw the veto of Irene Montero”, insisted Serra, who has sent the message that vetoing Montero is also a mistake because it could ” demobilize” the left-wing electorate.
In statements to RAC1, Iglesias has acknowledged that “it is very difficult for him to separate the personal from the political” in this matter: “I have seen Irene suffer a lot in these years,” said the former leader of Podemos for whom “this current situation is Very painful”. I can understand the pressure Yolanda is under right now, but I think she has time to rectify and I think that, if she doesn’t, maybe not next week or in a month and a half, but in a few years it will weigh on her. enormously that, because I believe that, in addition to being an injustice, it is a political error”, he stated.
In his opinion, removing a minister who is “a benchmark for the feminist struggle and LGTBI rights”, and who “precisely for this reason has been the object of political and media violence by the right and the extreme right”, launches ” a terrible message”, in the sense that “if you want to do politics on the left” you must try “not to expose yourself” to those political and media sectors. That veto, therefore, “is bad not for Podemos, but for Sumar’s own electoral expectations,” for which he hopes Yolanda DÃaz “reflects.”
“What they want is for us to provide solutions to their problems, I think the rest are not very interested,” DÃaz said in statements to the press upon arrival at the Council of EU Employment Ministers in Luxembourg when asked about the veto of Montero, that Podemos has asked to lift. The leader of Sumar, who spoke for the first time today on the controversy, stressed that “Spain was asking for a great agreement” that has been achieved and thanked all the political formations for their “generosity”.
This Monday the leader of Sumar limited herself to repeating that the Spanish want to talk about problems such as the loss of purchasing power, the rise in mortgages, education or health. “Right now we are going to do what we have to do, which is to provide solutions to our country. We have them. We have a program that we will present in the following days and we are going to continue improving people’s lives,” DÃaz said.
The person who has intervened in the controversy from outside the space has been the spokesman for the Republican Left of Catalonia in the Congress of Deputies, Gabriel Rufián, who has published a very harsh article on Monday in which he skins DÃaz. “You can’t add by subtracting,” he sums up. In the article, published in the Público newspaper, Rufián, who has never hidden his sympathy for Montero and his enmity with DÃaz, especially since the negotiation of the labor reform and the ERC vote against it, juxtaposes hurtful phrases against the second while praises the courage of the former against the right.
The text, entitled They have not vetoed it, they have sold it, the ERC spokesman denounces that, when “things get ugly” with pressure from the right, “in the PSOE you always look at the ceiling and in some blue bench you always look at the ground.” And he abounds: “Hypocrisy from within always hurts more than fascism from without. Disloyalty always hurts more than the fight. There are those who demonstrated and fought and there are those who elbowed and betrayed.”
“The infinite loop of the supposed Spanish left and its court. There are those who speak as if they were going to deliver a Goya and without microphones negotiate as if they were going to poke your eyes out,” Rufián continues in a devastating phrase against the leader of Sumar, to develop its title: “Irene Montero has not been banned, Irene Montero has been sold. She has been sold for the promise of a salvation that will not come.”
Rufián asserted that “there is no set, editorial, financing, aid or gathering in favor that is worth selling your people”, because “by selling it, the fascists win.” “You cannot stop the right and the true extreme right, being a false left. You cannot vote for someone who does not say anything so as not to bother anyone. You cannot vote by vetoing. You cannot add, subtracting. It has been a pride, partner. You have opened the way where there was only weeds, “he concluded.
In a message on her social networks, Montero corresponded to Rufián: “Thank you, Gabriel. Very proud of the multinational and feminist alliances that we have built, and that continue to be essential to conquer rights.” The Secretary General of Podemos and Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra, reacted in turn with a message consisting of purple hearts.
In turn, the spokesman for United We Can in the Congress of Deputies, Pablo Echenique, wrote: “Thank you Gabriel for thinking this and for writing it. You have moved me,” while the former leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, citing the phrase of Ruffian that “hypocrisy from within hurts more than fascism from without” and “disloyalty than the fight”, he finished: “Maybe. But your recognition and affection fills me with pride. Thank you”.
