PS Socialists insist there can be no red lines in dialogue to seal State Budget
Wednesday sees the first State of the Nation debate since the minority AD government, led by prime minister Luís Montenegro, took office – and a lot of political posturing is going on ahead of it.
PS Socialists particularly are insisting that they are prepared to “start a dialogue with the government over the State Budget” (the first real test of this government’s durability) but that they will not accept any kind of red lines.
Said Marcos Perestrello from the PS’ national secretariat, “there is a firm and genuine desire on the part of the PS to build a good budget”, but the obligation to approve it “lies first and foremost with the government”.
PS leader Pedro Nuno Santos – ‘mandated’ by the national political commission on Monday to start the dialogue with Luís Montenegro’s government – has ensured on his ‘good faith’, as indeed has the government, through minister of parliamentary affairs Pedro Duarte.
What Duarte however has stressed to Lusa is that his executive has “ideas, a sense of state and a sense of responsibility. And in that sense, we are absolutely open, not just available, but interested, in establishing talks, negotiations, frank, open, positive dialogue with the oppositions”.
In Duarte’s perspective, it is more up to the oppositions to “have the greatness to put the country’s interests above the party’s”…
And this is the crux of the political theatre ongoing right now: AD is presenting itself as fully-committed to the good of the country; PS Socialists and much of the left, complaining that AD is being arrogant.
The reality however has been that the two largest parties in opposition (PS and CHEGA, both on opposite sides of the political spectrum) have achieved what Duarte describes as “a very unreasonable and very unexpected” form of confluence.
“If these parties think that what interests them most, and therefore that’s their ultimate goal, is to boycott the government’s action, to jeopardise the government’s success, to somehow sabotage the government’s results and, ultimately, to bring down the government, to create a crisis to try to make some partisan gain, if that’s the attitude, it’s going to be very difficult,” he told Lusa, adding that he is convinced that the country is “breathing better (…) breathing more positively” since AD’s arrival. “We have gone from a time when we looked at governance and public policies very much focused on cases, on little cases, on party bickering, to a time when we are now focused on policies, on programmes, on packages of measures that aim to look at the quality of people’s lives and the future of the country,” he said.
After just over a hundred days in government, Pedro Duarte recalled the measures already adopted by the PSD/CDS-PP minority government, such as the 100% reimbursement of medicines for beneficiaries of the Solidarity Supplement for the Elderly, which also saw benefit increased by €50 per month and the income of old people’s children eliminated as a factor of exclusion.
He also listed the agreement with the teachers’ unions to reinstate length of service and measures in the areas of health, housing, immigration, and young people.
Writing one of his regular columns today, Correio da Manhã’s editorial director general Carlos Rodrigues stresses that the “choreography involving the government and the opposition in a kind of dance of approaches and retreats” will very likely go on until the last moment.
But the bottom line is that neither the government, nor the PS want elections – for very obvious reasons: the government “because it knows that better conditions of stability would be unlikely. To have this, Montenegro has to govern for a longer period of time and increase his emotional link with the electorate”; and PS Socialists because “the left is clearly in a minority at this time”.
Another dissuasion (for the left) is that PS mayors “need time to prepare for municipal elections next year”. A new national election would confuse all that, and could see PS popularity jeopardised.
In other words, “there will be a budget” – meaning the government will survive into 2025.
“It remains to be seen which discourse will satisfy the political clientele on both sides of the barricade and which will make both leaders come out on top”, concludes Rodrigues. ND
Source material: LUSA/ Correio da Manhã
