Thursday, March 28

United We Can celebrates “the progressive change of direction” but asks for another new tax on large corporations


The minority group that makes up the coalition government celebrated this Tuesday that the President of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, has launched “the progressive change of direction” that they have been demanding for months. United We Can pressured the PSOE from inside and outside the Council of Ministers to further reduce the prices of transport passes and, above all, to create new taxes on large electricity companies and companies, to alleviate growing inflation. That is why the confederal group has wanted to attribute the measures announced by Sánchez on the first day of the debate on the state of the nation, the first in which Podemos participates, in addition to recognizing the laws approved by the ministries that are under his control.

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“What was impossible until recently is now possible. A small joy for the country we love”, valued, in a tweet, the second vice president and coordinator of United We Can in the Government, Yolanda Díaz, shortly after the president’s speech concluded. “These measures are positive, but surely they will not be the last,” she added, although she asked for more. In her opinion, it is necessary to tax the “large corporations that are listed on the stock market and have absolutely extraordinary profits.” “But we are going little by little and widening,” she acknowledged.

During the debate, both the president of the United We Can group, Jaume Asens, and the spokesperson for the space in Congress, Pablo Echenique, have maintained the same political line of celebrating the measures announced by Sánchez, asking him for more ambition and also taking care of his partners. “In his last appearance, I asked him for courage, to recover the political initiative. Today you have picked up the glove and staged the progressive change of direction that we have been calling for. And we appreciate it,” Asens said. “We value very positively the speech, the announcements and the turn that the Government has carried out”, added Echenique.

He has recalled that, from United We Can, they have been demanding “for months” to “redirect the course and recover the rhythm” of the Executive. “You have done that here today with measures that we have been asking for, some of them for a long time,” he added. “We are insistent people, some minister has called us stubborn, and indeed we are, but we also know how to recognize when it is right and you have been right”, he riveted. With what Sánchez announced today, in Echenique’s opinion, he allows himself to “protect the social majority” by looking “in the face of the powerful”, but “also recovering the initiative of the progressive government.” “We are concerned about the reactionary advance and we want to reissue this coalition government in 2023, and we believe that what has been announced here today allows it to be reissued,” he said.

But Echenique has put more measures on the table that, in his opinion, should be put in place by the progressive government in the remainder of the legislature. It has proposed allocating 10,000 million to health, education, care and social services, the approval of a family law with aid of 100 euros per month for each child and 7-day care permits, 600 million more for dependency, further raising the minimum wage and increase non-contributory pensions “immediately”.

A “dystopia” if there had been no motion of censure

Both, Asens and Echenique, have made a closed defense of the coalition government and the partners of the investiture. The leader of the ‘comuns’ has raised, in fact, imagining by chapters a “dystopia” of “the Spain that was not” but “what could have been if the motion of censure against Mariano Rajoy had not prospered”. “The PP would continue to govern despite being convicted of benefiting from corruption”, he assured, and pointed out that “the first Reactionary Coalition Government in democracy”, of PP and Vox, had already been announced. In that “dystopia”, the Vox deputy, José Ortega Smith would be the Minister of Health and Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, vice president of an Executive that would promote “scholarships for the rich”, which “Ayuso is doing today in Madrid”.

The parliamentarian of En Comú Podem has also had words about the so-called political police: “The Minister of the Interior would compulsively fabricate false evidence as Minister Fernández Díaz did against political opponents. Those adversaries that Villarejo talked about with Mrs. Cospedal while she was taking photos with Mr. Feijóo ”, he added, referring to the audios of the former commissioner. At this point Asen has addressed Feijóo: “The moderate mask fell off when he put to Vox in the government of Castilla y León. But now when he does not condemn and does not distance himself from the mafia practices of his party, the mask of a Democrat is beginning to fall off. His new PP is the same as the old one”, he concluded, transferring at that point “a few words of support for Pablo Iglesias” who, as he explained, “has been the victim of media harassment, sewers and defamation”.

Echenique has considered that the “democratic state” of the country is “black”, precisely because of those audios of the former commissioner that have starred in the political news of recent weeks. The spokesman for United We Can believes that the audios of Villarejo and the director of La Sexta, Antonio García Ferreras, pose a “terrible threat to democracy.” For this reason, he has urged Sánchez to “work together to fight against the media sewer.” For Echenique, the PP itself is a “threat to democracy”, at a time when “there is a whole current of opinion” that says that “Feijóo is moderate and that the PP is a state party”. “But it is not true”, he has riveted him.

The two leaders of United We Can who have intervened in the Plenary have also highlighted the need to take care of the majority of the investiture, and have alerted Sánchez that only with these forces will he be able to launch his legislative agenda. The “challenge”, he has said, is “to face this decisive moment with initiative and courageous measures”. “I think you know that this can only be done with the majority of the investiture,” he added, asking the chief executive not to fall into the “trap” of the PP.

Spending on weapons and the Melilla massacre

President, this bloc is not a lesser evil. It is the future. Its condition of possibility. It is a mistake to look to the right. When it does, things go awry and our people become demotivated”, Jaume Asens had previously assured. Both he and Echenique wanted, however, to make clear their opposition to the increase in defense spending. “People do not need a decree of war. People need a hundred social decrees like the ones announced here today”, Asens said.

There has also been time for immigration policies, with special attention to the 37 people killed in Melilla, which is not a “well-resolved operation”, nor is it the fault of the mafias. “It is the most serious massacre of the last 40 years on the border. It is unacceptable. It must be investigated. We are required by the European Commission, Amnesty International or the UN. Those 37 people had the same right to flee from the horror as the Ukrainians who arrive in our cities. Mr President, more than the president of the agreement with Morocco, we need the president of the Aquariusproud of saving immigrants on the high seas, today’s president who stands up to the power companies”, he settled.

Asens has also asked Sánchez for a “last sprint” from the legislature not only in the social sphere, “also in the democratic or territorial agenda.” “There is only one year left to start drawing a new territorial pact that recognizes the plurinational nature of Spain. There is one year left to approve the new law of the CNI or the law of official secrets, so that no deputy of this House is spied on again. There is one year left to end the gag law and the rest of the PP’s anti-democratic legacy. There is one year left to pass the new freedom of expression law so that a rapper will never go to jail again”, he concluded, before making Sánchez think “how he wants to be remembered”.

Sánchez highlights the leftist character of the Government

“Both Yolanda, as well as Ione, as well as Irene, as well as Alberto have my recognition”, has responded the head of the Executive. “Also Mr. Subirats”, he added, a few seconds later, after being aware that he had forgotten about the Minister of Universities. In addition, Sánchez, in his response to the leaders of United We Can, has wanted to highlight the leftist character of the Government, highlighting that he has been the first to approve the minimum vital income or the taxes announced this Tuesday.

Sánchez has responded to the criticism launched by the leaders of United We Can at the claim of the socialist wing to launch an increase in military spending due to the war in Ukraine and has considered it compatible with greater social investment. “We can do both things and it is also our duty to do so”, he has responded to Echenique and Asens.

“If we do not give a response of solidarity to the allies so that Putin does not enter their territory, we would be doing ourselves a disservice,” he assured about the shipment of weapons to Ukraine rejected by Podemos. “It is our duty and above all from the forces of the left”, he has said, alluding to the isolation suffered by the Government of the Second Republic during the Civil War.





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