The same amendment approved twice: the unexpected mess that delays the 'only yes is yes' law
Everything was ready for the so-called 'only yes is yes' law to receive the definitive green light before the Cortes went on vacation. It was almost taken for granted and, therefore, the full marathon of the Senate last Tuesday was attended by the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, to celebrate it. "Today we fulfill a very clear mandate from the feminist movement," she asserted after a long four-hour debate. the surprise came a few minutes after the voting began, with amendment 93, presented by Junts per Catalunya. "It is approved," declared the president of the chamber, Ander Gil. The same amendment, however, had already been approved in Congress two months earlier.
After announcing the result, the president had to ask for silence to continue with the session before the murmur that began to spread and the applause of the Popular Party bench. The support of the amendment forced the text to return to Congress and frustrated its final approval, as contemplated in the regulation. But hardly anyone understood what had happened. No change was expected to go through, despite a total of 159 amendments being debated. None had been accepted the previous week in the Senate Equality Committee, the previous step. With the 93, the PP, the Confederal Left, the entire Nationalist Group, Citizens and ERC pressed the green button.
The amendment involves replacing the phrase "forced abortions and sterilizations" with "forced abortions and sterilizations" in the preamble. As Junts explained, the party's intention was to consider forcing a woman to abort a form of violence, just as it does the Istanbul Convention in its article 39, which picks it up like this. Putting it in masculine implies that "forced" also includes abortions, while in feminine it only refers to sterilizations. After finishing the voting, Ander Gil announced that the rule should return to the Lower House before being sanctioned by the king because the bills begin their journey there, then go to the Senate and, if the latter introduces changes, they must return.
The point, however, is that the same amendment had already been voted on in the previous process in Congress. It was last May 18, in the Equality Commission, where the opinion of the norm was debated before going to the plenary session. Amendment 66, also by Junts, proposed exactly the same thing: to include "forced abortions and sterilizations" in the law. And it was approved. The chamber gave its support after the debate, which was fundamentally dedicated to prostitution, to the same amendment that now delays the Organic Law of Comprehensive Guarantee of Sexual Freedom.
Proposal 66 received 20 votes in favor and 17 against, as can be seen in the session diary. "It is approved," declared the president of the commission, Carmen Calvo. However, in the opinion that came out of that long session, which ended up being posted on the Congress website and which reached the Senate, the word "forced" had been replaced by "forced", contrary to what the amendment contemplated. The Lower House has not responded to questions from this medium about what could have happened so that the phrase agreed by the groups was transferred to the law with the changed gender.
Several sources from different parliamentary groups point to an "error" when transcribing the text by the Congress services, but there is no official response in this regard. What is clear is that the senators received a law that read "cases of abortion and forced sterilizations." No one seemed to realize before, in the process in Congress, that Amendment 66 said something different. Junts sources in the Senate assure that they saw that the phrase "was not adapted to the Istanbul Agreement" and decided to present amendment 93 to correct "forced" by "forced".
After the support of the senators, the disappointment was felt among the parties of the government coalition, who trusted that the norm, developing a comprehensive framework to combat sexual violence in the style of the Law against Gender Violence of 2004, will enter into force before the summer. The Senate lawyers kept in the air the possibility that it would be approved. From the Ministry of Equality they defended that it was an error that could be corrected without the need to lengthen the process. But everything indicates that we will have to wait until September for the law to be approved.
The last attempt of the department led by Irene Montero came with the proposal to the formations that had supported the amendment to sign a joint text that would prevent it from having to return to Congress, according to sources from the groups. Equality did not want to comment on anything about it. The letter, to which elDiario.es has had access, supposes recognizing that "the amendment in question is not such", but a "mere grammatical correction", since it had already been incorporated through 66 in the previous procedure. And he demands that the Senate table be corrected because "the modification requirements imposed by article 90 of the Constitution do not meet."
However, it did not go ahead. Junts sources assure that it required "the consensus of all the groups" and "the PP had refused to sign it", in addition to the fact that the text "assumed that what was corrected was a simple typo, while what was corrected is that [la redacción] corresponds 100% to the Istanbul Convention". The popular, for their part, justify their refusal in that "the president [del Senado] had already signed that the law be transferred" to Congress and in "not signing something that goes against" the vote in favor that they had previously given in plenary.
The PP also points out that "nobody wanted to sign it", although ERC sources in the Senate, who were unaware that the amendment had already been adopted, acknowledge that they would have supported it. "Given the number of cases of sexual violence that we know of, the international context of the regression of women's rights, and a Spanish right and extreme right that block and deny these rights, it was important that the law go ahead, because although it is a law that could be improved , it is a good law. In addition, once approved, the Government can be urged with parliamentary initiatives so that the norm includes what it currently does not do, "they point out.
After the session in the Senate, Irene Montero accused the Popular Party of supporting the amendment as a way of trying to delay the law, which she had unsuccessfully tried to overthrow through a veto proposal that did not prosper. Not only the popular supported the change of Junts, but their support was decisive. She received 130 votes in favor, 112 against and 17 abstentions. "This is the contribution and level of the PP in Spanish politics, using a letter to delay a law that can allow the State to effectively protect and accompany women who are victims of sexual violence", said the head of Equality.
PP sources in the Senate deny this and defend their support for the amendment pointing out that "the nuances are very important" in the laws "whether by a comma, a letter or a whole word". In Congress, the popular had presented this proposal, in the same terms as Junts' 66, but not in the Senate, where their support was unexpected. Practically at the same time that the president of the Upper House announced that the amendment had been approved, Senator Javier Maroto celebrated on Twitter that the law had to be reviewed again in Congress and charged Montero through Twitter.
For his part, Junts defends the amendment, although he acknowledges that there were a total of 35 proposals registered by the Catalan formation, many "of greater significance" than the only one approved and that he "would have liked them to prosper". Even so, party sources focus on the fact that the Upper House has the capacity to approve changes and regret that the law "has been stalled in Congress for 12 months, when in the Senate it has only been processed for 12 days due to urgency."
