Pacts, abusers and falsehoods

Let's turn what happened into a differentiable triptych, but linked together. The Popular Party agrees with Vox in the Valencian Community and the agreement is received as if it were a surprise, first perplexity, as a danger to democracy, second distortion, and as a concession to a woman abuser, third distortion. So, in order not to reproduce some paste in which policies are mixed with pacts and pacts with abusers, let's paint that differentiated picture. Like those paintings in churches, in the Middle Ages, divided into three panels or squares, joined by hinges and related to each other, but perfectly distinguishable.. And in the center, the politics.

the pacts

All democracies, by concept, are government systems without ideology, discounting the one contained in the Constitution, which has been approved by all citizens.. Therefore, the government of two parties that are running for election, with constitutional support, can never suppose a “democratic involution” or an “anti-democratic pact”, as is repeated on the left when they refer to the one reached by the PP and vox. Democracy has no political color, not even when parties from the extreme left reach the government, as has happened in Spain, or from the extreme right, as happens in Italy, Poland or Hungary.. The essence of democracies is the strength of the powers of the State and, in the case of Europe, the close surveillance that is exercised over all national legislation that affects the founding principles and rights of the European Union. In addition, in Europe the most effective of democratic medicines is always used, sanctions and penalties in the distribution of European funds. In Poland they know it well, but in Spain President Pedro Sánchez and his partners from Podemos were also able to verify it when they sought an assault on the judiciary.

Does all this mean that we should applaud the ultra-right and the extreme left reaching the governments? Not at all, among other things, because we are not talking about personal preferences, but about democratic and constitutional principles. Much more in a country like ours, Spain, where the two main political forces, PP and PSOE, have tried by all means to end the political center as an independent force and in which society, as it has historically shown, detests centrality , understood here as a sanctimonious equidistance by the majority. If socialists and popularists do not decide to facilitate the governments of the adversary when they win elections without an absolute majority, there is only one path left: the pact with the extremes that they later cynically condemn.

The politics

The best advice that Julio Anguita left us, usable throughout the political arc, is the one that advocated abandoning clichés and focusing only on the contents. “Program, program and program”, said the Caliph of Córdoba. The bad news is that Spain is also a country that tends to be more concerned with forms in politics than with content.. The normal thing, unfortunately, is that each one analyzes the political agreements depending on their preferences: those on the left consider the agreements of the Socialists with the Basque and Catalan independentistas a democratic advance, while they consider it a democratic regression that a ruler of the Popular Party signs a deal with the extreme right. And vice versa. The scrupulously democratic rigor would indicate to us, however, that the fundamental thing when drawing red lines is that it be done on policies, not on acronyms.

The PSOE and the PP are obliged in their respective government pacts to clearly outline the limits of those policies that turn their partners into extremist parties. That has been the downfall of Pedro Sánchez, for example, in his agreements with Esquerra and Bildu. In the case of Vox, the essentials are the red lines in immigration, in gender violence and in respect for LGTBI minorities. On the contrary, what is deeply undemocratic are the previous vetoes and, much more, the ad hominem vetoes, which is precisely what the PP has incurred in its Valencia pact with that Vox leader who was convicted of gender violence..

The abusers

The veto of the person is the most reprehensible part of the Popular Party in this Valencia pact, because what is important is camouflaged, which are the policies, and the unconstitutional atrocity of life sentence is committed. The enormous risk, commented on other times, of the invasion of the woke movement in political speeches is that it introduces inquisitorial censorship in the defense of noble causes, such as all those related to racism or violence against women.. The struggle for real equality can never produce the monster of a new inequality. The man who leads Vox in the Valencian Community was sentenced 20 years ago (20 years!) for a “habitual crime of psychic violence” with “coercion, insults and harassment” against his ex-wife. One year in prison, a 6,000-euro fine and disqualification from passive suffrage, to be elected public office, also for one year. The guy, his name is Carlos Flores, who had been a member of Fuerza Nueva, separated from his wife and, since then, constantly harassed her with the worst insults, even in front of their children.. Let us rule out, once again, personal considerations about the moral character of this man, because it is not the case.. What we must consider – again the Constitution – is that the ultimate goal of the penalties in Spain is the reinsertion of the offender (article 25.2). In the name of what and who can arrogate the authority to establish what type of crimes must be perpetuated eternally?

Legislative and dialectical excesses in the fight against gender violence are what are causing, paradoxically, the trivialization and denial of many adolescents, as recent studies show, in a problem as serious as violence against women. The fundamentals of this Carlos Flores, what concerns us in this pact, is not what happened 20 years ago, but what happens now with the policies of the Valencia pact. And it is there where we must be attentive to the regression in the fight against gender violence and in favor of real equality for women. The politics, yes, the politics. not the inquisition. That is why the policies are the ones that are in the central picture of this triptych of assumed falsehoods and impostures.