New legislative cycle starts with ‘race against clock’
Pressure on the incoming centre-right government is so intense that it will be ‘racing against the clock’ to try and deliver all the promises it made during the electoral campaign.
According to reports today, “from health, to education, to the police” demands are already arriving at the Palace of São Bento (the official residence of the country’s prime minister).
Bruno Pereira representing the platform of PSP and GNR police says he is hoping the forces’ demands (to be paid risk subsidies along the lines of PJ counterparts) will be ‘sorted’ within two to three months.
“I cannot see that this commitment (by PSD leader Luís Montenegro) cannot be resolved”. It is a question of ‘word given’ having to be ‘word honoured’, he said. Anything less “would not be democratic…”
CGTP – the confederation of Portuguese trade unions – insists that salaries generally need “valorisation” (for that read ‘increasing’), and warns that April 25/ May 1, two critical days in the Portuguese calendar for democracy/ workers rights, will see a large number of workers ‘on the streets’; FENPROF, the federation of teachers, is keen to see the recovery of ‘years/ career frozen’ as quickly as possible; the syndicate of nurses is calling for a meeting with the new health minister over upgrades to salaries/ conditions, and the Ordem dos Médicos (Order of Physicians) is also hoping for a meeting, to sort out the myriad problems in the SNS public health sector.
At the same time ‘movements’ representing citizens are clamouring. Today’s ‘news’ being that the movement ‘Porta-a-Porta’, which defends the right to housing, has already called on the new Minister of Infrastructure to clarify whether he is willing to repeal the new Urban Lease Regime and intervene to regulate the market.
“The new minister must comply with the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, especially Article 65 – not the opposite. The new minister must take the side of those who need a home to live in,” says the movement in a statement sent to the press.
“It’s essential that the new minister says straight away whether he’s willing to repeal the new Urban Lease Regime and, with that, intervene to regulate the rental market,” the text continues.
What this means is that the movement wants the incoming Infrastructure minister – Miguel Pinto Luz – “to ban evictions” when the tenants have no alternative to decent housing. It also wants a commitment “to build public housing”.
Porta-a-Porta has other concerns: it wants to ensure that first home buyers with bank loans are not charged more than 35% of their net income “mobilising banks’ extraordinary profits for this purpose”. It is equally worried that ideas for ‘flexibilisation’ of land use and occupation could be another open door to “speculative activities”.
In other words, Porta-a-Porta want to know this minister’s intentions. In the past, says its statement, strategic choices of right-wing parties in government “have been at the service of the banks (…) or at the service of funds and large landlords with the liberalisation of the rental market”.
The statement also takes the opportunity to call for people to “take to the streets on April 25, demanding a “Home for Everyone!“, insisting that “solutions can only be achieved through fighting for them in the streets”.
Source material: LUSA/ Correio da Manhã
