“Why didn’t he say all this seven months ago?” Query commentators
PS leader Pedro Nuno Santos made a surprise announcement about the 2025 State Budget at 8pm this evening (the country was only expecting to hear the PS party’s position on this subject on Monday evening).
The reason, clearly, for tonight’s impromptu address is that the PS party is deeply-divided over which way its MPs want to vote.
Santos laid out all the reasons why he, as leader, believes it is “normal” for the opposition to vote against a budget, but why in this case (the government being so ‘new’ and the country having already had two legislative elections in quick succession) he considers it would be better to simply abstain.
Inferring that a third round of legislative elections in less than three years would be unlikely to bring about a substantially different parliamentary make-up, the PS secretary-general said he will be taking his feelings to the meeting of the party’s political commission on Monday (at which point there may be another evening announcement to assembled press).
The trouble with this statement is that commentators suggest he should have come to these conclusions “seven months ago”.
“All the reasons he took 10 minutes to explain could have been explained right at the start of the legislature”, said SIC’s political editor Christina Figueiredo.
Had Santos made his party’s position clear seven months ago, the country would have been spared all the ‘drama’ this budget has brought so far, she said – and possibly much of the drama that is still likely to come.
An abstention will not automatically drag the country into the third round of legislative elections in less than 1,000 days – albeit Pedro Nuno Santos said it will shine light on the situation of “a government isolated”.
Fellow political commentators on the same channel, Ângela Silva and José Gomes Ferreira, agreed that who is looking isolated (even “erratic, insecure and indecisive”) is actually Pedro Nuno Santos.
But that is another story.
For now, the country is finally aware: the PS leader seeks to see his party abstain when it comes to approving the next State Budget, but he does not want to plunge the country into a (new) political crisis.
All that being clear, this position still has to be confirmed by the PS’ political commission on Monday.
