Sedition reform enters Parliament
💰🔊 Vox and the PP can shout as much as they want but they don't have the votes to stop the socialists, Podemos and the separatists changing the law.
🔊 AUDIO
They voted in the end after midnight. 187 in favour, 155 against, with six abstentions. Sánchez’s bill to reform the crime of sedition, which is actually the repeal of the crime of sedition and its replacement by “aggravated public disorder”, has now been admitted to parliament for commissions, amendments, debate and futher voting. Last night was only the first step.
The bill also contains other modifications of Spain’s Criminal Code, including price altering in public tenders, smuggling and hiding a dead body from the relatives of the victim. But no one was talking about those bits last night.
"What are you offering," asked Paco Aranda, who was speaking for the socialists, to the opposition Popular Party: "not just to Spaniards but also to Catalans?", as if everyone in Catalonia were not also Spanish: “Absolutely nothing at all”, he replied to himself, accusing them of “cowardice” because they were scared of Vox.
"What did you deliver yesterday on collection day that Bildu wanted?" asked the PP spokeswoman, Cuca Gamarra, back to the socialists: "getting rid of the Civil Guard from Navarra, getting rid of Civil Guard traffic police from Navarra becuase that’s exactly what Bildu wanted”.
"You got the budget passed", she added: "and this repeal is one more payment from the government to the Catalan independence movement to stay in power".
Arnaldo Otegi, the leader of Basque separatist party Bildu, clarified yesterday how all this really works: “There is no progressive government for the Spanish state if those of us who want to leave the Spanish state […] do not support that opportunity […] that is the great paradox […] that is what gives us the possibility of negotiating things”.
"Spain is not for sale!", shouted Ortega Smith, for Vox so loudly you might wonder if there was a problem with the microphones in parliament. Abascal's party said they would be "implacable against separatist coups". If they ever reach government, of course. They are still on 15% in the polls. For now, as we were saying the other day, neither Vox nor the PP even wants to table another motion of no confidence. Everyone is waiting for the elections next year.
Meanwhile, Sánchez, the socialists, Podemos and the Basque and Catalan separatists can legislate what seems right to them because in this parliament, they have the votes from a majority of all Spaniards. That's democracy.