“Join the government to decide well on necessities of the Portuguese”
Just as LIVRE is said to be trying to organise a joining together of left wing parties ‘to discuss the political situation’, prime minister Luís Montenegro has urged PS Socialists and CHEGA – the two largest parties in opposition – to “worry less about joining forces” and instead join up with the government to “decide well” on the necessities of the Portuguese people.
Addressing the 28th congress of young Social democrats (JSD) in Lisbon today, he said: “worry less about getting together with each other, get together with the Portuguese, and the best way to get together with the Portuguese is to get together with the government to decide well on what today are the main needs in the life of every Portuguese.”
“We have shown that what we said in the electoral campaign were not mere proclamations, they were the basis for decisions.
“We’re not here to proclaim, we’re here to decide and to govern,” he said, to loud applause.
In much the same vein, the new JSD leader, João Pedro Louro, said that the PS and CHEGA “are living a romance today”, but “young people will not forgive them if the implementation of IRS Jovem is not approved” and the promised increase of their disposable income is stymied because of a “blockade orchestrated by PS and CHEGA”.
It was very much a ‘check’ moment in the endless game of political chess that the AD minority government has been forced to play since the results of the March 10 elections.
Said the prime minister: “It is in the interests of young people to maintain their connection to their homeland, their families, their friends – and it is in the general interest of the country that our human resources, so many of them highly qualified, continue to be at our disposal, and on our side in terms of a more balanced society and vibrant economy”.
“For us to have sustained economic growth, for us to have better salaries in Portugal, for us to have the guarantees that the Welfare State works, we need Portuguese youth in Portugal, working in Portugal, giving everything, which is a lot, that they have to give in our country”.
The PSD leader then listed various measures adopted by the government aimed at improving the situations of young people, such as the proposal to reduce taxation on labour income by one third up to the age of 35; exemption from Municipal Property Transfer Tax (IMT) and stamp duty on the purchase of a first home; support for renting and the provision of 700 extra university student accommodations in the next academic year.
For the PS – indeed any party – to vote against these measures, young people everywhere would feel defrauded. Right at the start of the new government, commentators predicted AD’s strategy would be to ‘rule by decree’ and start with measures that no-one (for that read: no party) could fail to agree with (unless they were thinking only of themselves).
The feelgood ambience however soured as the prime minister left the venue, in Campo Pequeno. According to Lusa, “journalists tried to ask the Prime Minister questions, but a security guard violently pushed a journalist away from the television, sparking protests”.
Meantime LIVRE, which immediately after the March 10 elections made a stab at the creation of an ‘alternative of the left’, is back again trying to gather together PS, Bloco de Esquerda, PCP communists and PAN “to analyse the current political situation”.
Former finance minister João Leão has also been telling Lusa that he ‘predicts’ that, for all the government’s populist measures and efforts to persuade, “neither of the principle parties in opposition want to be the one that sanctions the State Budget” – the first ‘major hurdle’ at which AD may ‘come unstuck’.
In João Leão’s opinion, Portugal could be headed for new elections relatively soon.
