End to the PP and Vox honeymoon: Ayuso will not support the equality law that includes repealing LGTBI standards

End to the honeymoon of PP and Vox in the Community of Madrid. After agreeing to the approval of the first budgets in the region since 2019, inaugurating a stage of collaboration that has been prolonged with the acceleration of the processing of a new education law, the two parties clashed this Wednesday over the equality law that sponsors the extreme right. That rule does not mention the word "woman" even once. It includes in its articles the repeal of LGTBI and Trans laws in the region. And the PP has decided to abstain in the vote for its admission to processing, which will take place this Thursday in the plenary session of the Assembly, so the proposal will decay and come to naught.

“The position will be abstention. We cannot vote in favor of an initiative that we believe has many technical deficiencies and that, furthermore, we believe that it is not the tool to be able to modify certain laws", explained Alfonso Serrano, parliamentary spokesman for the PP, who only 24 hours before he had refused to clarify the meaning of his party's vote. “We have to work seriously and rigorously, and we are not going to play into the game of the left [voting against]”, he added. “What we have done from the popular parliamentary group is to open a dialogue, like the one we have offered to Vox, to reform those specific aspects of these laws that can certainly be improved, but in no case are we going to vote in favor of their repeal”.

The PP opposes the repeal of LGTBI laws, which includes Vox's equality norm, although it is willing to modify it. Judge Enrique López, regional Justice and Presidency counselor, has already sent a first proposal to the extreme right that includes eliminating the articles contained in both laws on the reversal of the burden of proof (they oblige the accused of discriminating to provide a justification of what happened with "reasonable, substantiated or proven facts or indications") as well as technical and editorial improvements. The document, however, has been flatly rejected by Vox.

“It is an unsatisfactory proposal, and we have not received any new news,” Íñigo Henríquez de Luna, deputy spokesman for the extreme right in the Assembly, said on Tuesday. "We ask the PP and Mrs. Ayuso to be brave, and not to give in to pressure from the LGTBI lobby, which she may have from her own party, from Genoa 13, and keep her word," he added. "We challenge any parliamentary group to say what right of any citizen is being attacked."

Risk in budgets

The decision of the PP has its share of risk. It means dissatisfying its only possible partner just when there is still the key vote to approve the 2022 Budgets, which will take place on December 22. However, Vox ensures that the two issues are independent, according to a source trusted by Monasterio. Even so, the decision to opt for abstention from the equality law has only come after a long analysis of the Vox proposal that has involved the main advisers of the Díaz Ayuso government.

“The Government is not at all in favor of this repeal [of LGTBI laws], but it is working on technical improvement of these regulations, to make them efficient and guarantee equality”, said Enrique López, the Justice Counselor. "We are looking for the best legal instrument to overcome these deficits."

“The abstention is due to the fact that we have all studied the norm in depth, and we have seen that there are certain issues that are not appropriate in the law”, has expanded the government spokesman, Enrique Ossorio, who has stressed that there are aspects “ wrong” in the text, for example in the educational part. "And we have commented many times that the LGTBI laws, from a legal point of view, are very poorly carried out, because they are like a rally, but we totally share the objective of the laws: the absolute absence of discrimination in the Community", has added.

PP and Vox are doomed to understand each other, as will be seen in the next plenary session, when in all probability they will agree to support the suppression of regional taxes (which represent 0.02% of revenue). However, after the peace stage opened by the culmination of the budget negotiation, the curves return: the PP will not allow the processing of Vox's equality law, and tries to separate him from the repeal of LGTBI laws so that he accepts his modification.

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