The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, He will speak this Wednesday at 9:00 a.m. in the Congress of Deputies to outline the “fundamental lines” of its so-called Action Plan for Democracy, based primarily on carrying out legislative initiatives that help combat disinformation.
The intervention of the head of the Executive occurs almost three months after the socialist leader He pledged to work “tirelessly” for the “pending regeneration of our democracy and for the consolidation of rights and freedoms.” These were Sánchez’s words after announcing that he would remain at the head of the Government once his five days of reflection expired following the investigation opened against his wife, Begoña Gómez, for alleged crimes of influence peddling and corruption.
In the first interviews after announcing his decision, Sánchez already announced that Their goal was to put in check “pseudo-digital” and “associations that defame and prosecute cases without evidence”, as well as parties “that decide to participate in the mud machinery”. “We are talking about a serious problem facing all Western democracies and we have to work together. Ultimately, freedom of expression cannot be confused with freedom of defamation,” he said in an interview with RTVE on April 29.
Sánchez gave himself 100 days to present his plan and assured that he would count on the parties, media and institutions to develop his proposals. But it was not until this past July 1, in an interview on La Ser, when the President of the Government put some of the proposed measures on the table. Among them, establish a cap on public funding for the media.
“It is unacceptable that disinformation is being financed with financial resources. There are media outlets that only have public resources. They have no readers. And that puts the independence of these pseudo-media outlets at serious risk,” he said. For this reason, Sánchez announced that he would seek to modify the law on institutional advertising to establish a maximum amount of public funding for these media outlets, although at the time he did not indicate percentages or maximum amounts.
In the face of criticism from the opposition, who see Sánchez as capable of curtailing the right to information, The government explains that all its measures will be covered by the media freedom law that the European Parliament approved last March. The law stipulates that media outlets must report on public funds received in the form of advertising or subsidies, and that these funds must be allocated according to public, proportionate and non-discriminatory criteria.
While waiting to learn the specific proposals, the second vice-president of the Government and Minister of Labour, Yolanda Díaz, has assured this Tuesday that her party, Sumar, has reached an agreement with the PSOE that will also prevent “pseudo-media that violate ethical codes” from accessing subsidies and public funding.
In the same speech, Díaz also said that the Government would repeal the so-called Gag Law that Mariano Rajoy’s government approved in 2015, although The PSOE has been downplaying the scope of the news until it is reduced “solely and exclusively” to the modification of article 36 of said law, so that taking or disseminating images during demonstrations is no longer an infraction.
Furthermore, according to sources from the party led by the vice president, insults to the crown, institutions such as the government, the judiciary or the security forces, and religious sentiment will be eliminated from the penal code.
Finally, the agreement also includes: a legal amendment to publicly compensate those people who are known to be under judicial investigation in cases that ultimately do not end up in trialas could be the case of the president’s wife, Begoña Gómez. A measure that would form part of the action plan to modify the organic law on the right to honour and the right to rectification.
PP: Sánchez wants to “close” media
Miguel Tellado, in the plenary session that debated the renewal of the CGPJ.
The opposition believes that this “democratic regeneration” package only hides Pedro Sánchez’s desire to intimidate the press at a time when news about his wife’s professional activity continues to surface. “It seems that the Sánchez regime will offer us a plan to help the corrupt and make things difficult for those who persecute them,” denounced this Tuesday the PP spokesman in Congress, Miguel Tellado.
According to Génova, Sánchez intends to “close” the media that are uncomfortable for him because they uncover cases of corruptionending them by withdrawing institutional advertising, in something that “reminds us of other regimes and is extremely serious.”
The national spokesperson for VOX, José Antonio Fúster, also stated a few days ago that Sánchez’s plan is based on “democratic repression” that only has one objective: “That no one talks about the fact that the president’s wife is being investigated for crimes of economic corruption.”
Source: www.huffingtonpost.es
