The Feminist Consejo of the PSOE of Madrid (PSOE-M), an advisory body created last July of experts in matters of equality and women’s rights, will transmit to the head of the party in Ferraz the conclusions of the meeting that celebrated these martes and in which several failures of the current protocol of denunciations of harassment in the party, which is going to be confirmed, will be examined in depth, according to the people who participated in the meeting.
One of these errors is linked to the current possibility of registering complaints completely anonymously or confidentially. The Consejo understands that this anonymity makes it difficult in some cases to investigate or verify complaints, as it considers that this could happen in the case of those filed against Francisco Salazar, who has been arrested for five months and which has caused this internal tidal wave from which the PSOE is suffering. Ferraz is considering the possibility of tinkering with the current protocol on various points.
Last July, the PSOE-M created a Feminist Council to respond to cases that had already occurred within the party, as they affected and ended Salazar’s political career. This Council, which now wants to extend to all federations and at the national level, is formed by a faculty of people, fundamentally linked to women and with a historical and essential trajectory within the PSOE and feminist movements, such as the lawyer Francisca Sauquillo; the former Secretary of State for Equality, Soledad Murillo, the president of the University Platform for Feminist and Gender Studies and professor of the Carlos III University, Rosa San Segundo, in addition to positions such as the Secretariat of the Autonomous Organization, Pilar Sánchez Acera, and representatives like Isaura Leal, María Sainz, Rosario Aguilar and Ana Serrano.
The president of the Consejo and secretariat of Equality of the PSOE-M, Lorena Morales, summoned her from this country before the accumulation of the most recent scandals and will be the one who will now transmit her conclusions to the national leadership of Ferraz. The discussion of this meeting focused a lot, according to those present, on the errors observed in the anti-acoso protocol in force since last summer at the national level at the PSOE and in which practically all present at the meeting agreed that it does not work in a very specific way in the separation of anonymous or confidential complaints, because as was demonstrated in the case of their registration against Salazar does not facilitate their verification.
At no time did the participants in the meeting doubt the veracity of the complaints against Salazar, on which there is often unanimity that they were not handled diligently. However, consider that anonymity or maximum confidentiality does not allow you to thoroughly investigate the facts, compare versions or request more data. Additionally, I believe this opens up dangerous fights due to false accusations or even from adversaries. Francisca Sauquillo herself recognized EL PAÍS with these problems thanks to her experience as a seasoned lawyer. The other participants in the meeting agreed: “The usual harassment protocols put in place in companies and administrations provide guarantees for whistleblowers and must be verifiable.”
The “very unanimous reflection” among the participants of the Consejo Feminista del PSOE-M ―a theoretical, informative and consultative body― ended with the message that the current anti-acoso protocol “must be revised in depth” to “achieve a complex and difficult balance between protecting the anonymity of those who report” and also “protecting the system” so that “any whistleblower” cannot enter it.
The federal leadership of the PSOE, faced with the accumulation of complaints and cases that have flourished in recent days, had agreed to carry out a general review of the anti-accusation protocol, but now it will also be in charge of external entities specialized in feminist themes that will propose a solution to this debate on the review of anonymity and confidentiality of complaints.
A decision practically taken, and that the Feminist Council of the party in Madrid will also raise behind its internal debate, reduces the time of investigation into the complaints filed by the Body against Acoso, which now provides for an analysis period of three months with the possibility of extending it to three more in large-scale hypotheses. complexity. The aim is to reduce these delays very significantly.
The Feminist Consejo of the PSOE-M also offers “obligatory and necessary” training for all positions in the party who wish to appear on the electoral lists.
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