President warns of pitfalls of government relying on “the third party”
In spite of President Marcelo’s noble ‘think-of-the-nation’ speech, events in national politics this week suggest party leaders are doing everything but.
The ‘first meeting between the prime minister and Socialist secretary-general Pedro Nuno Santos’ on Friday ended much more dismally than many had been hoping, with the latter saying his party could not accept two of the government’s key policies (reduced income tax regime for young earners, and reduced IRC business tax for companies) – even if they are remodelled – and producing a wish-list that the prime minister dismissed as “radical and inflexible”.
As Pedro Nuno Santos raises his hand in the the air to say he would ‘prefer elections to abdicating his party’s convictions’, the radical left continue to rail that they can’t accept a budget of the right (whatever it says) – and they don’t like being lectured by the president, either – while right wing CHEGA has stressed it “definitely won’t vote in favour of the budget” and thinks the government should come up with another one…
This is where leader writers and commentators point out that everyday people are now totally fed up with these shenanigans, and “already changing the channel whenever they hear the word ‘budget’”.
The feeling is “let them get on with it; wake us up when there’s a decision…” (which means sleep is preferable for the next 10-12 days, at least).
Next week is ‘important’ (if one has chosen not to hibernate), in that the government is preparing a ‘counter proposal’ to the PS’s so-called ‘radical and inflexible’ suggestions.
At the same time, the government (whether in the form of the prime minister or his spokesmen) keeps stressing that it cannot substitute its programme for the country with one of a party that lost the elections…
So yesterday, Marcelo added further drama to his messaging. This time he didn’t just stress the need to ‘think of the nation’; this time he warned of the consequences of the AD government not striking a deal with PS Socialists.
“If they don’t make an effort” to agree and take the country forwards, “it will be the third party” (CHEGA, with its 50 MPs) that ends up calling the shots – and in Marcelo’s perspective, this is all wrong – particularly if CHEGA decides not to support the budget (as it keeps threatening). Indeed, Marcelo calls it “the last thing that should happen”.
It is ‘fundamental’, he says, that decisions are made by the country’s two leading political forces.
“The government has to understand that the national interest is more important than the government’s programme”, the country’s head of State told RTP yesterday, and again today in Cantanhede. “The government’s programme has to become flexible; it has to make an effort in respect of principles that would be ideal”.
These comments, unsurprisingly, have seen the radical left complain Marcel is ‘trying to condition democracy’, and will have done nothing to mollify the radical right, which is puffed up with importance today, marching against immigration – and very possibly buoyed by the fact that the radical right has just won another round of elections in northern Europe.
“Maybe we should all hibernate”, suggests Correio da Manhã’s leader writer Octávio Ribeiro, summing up the current impasse as “a pantomime performed by two immature drama queens under the severe eye of a bipolar adult”.
For now, this agony looks set to persist right up to the ‘wire’ on October 10 (the moment the budget is due to be presented in parliament), and could even perpetuate beyond (to the end of November, when final voting takes place).
AD’s fragile make-up of just 80 MPs means that the spending plan cannot pass without either approval by PS Socialists (78 MPs), or abstention by PS and approval by CHEGA.
natasha.donn@portugalresident.com
