Portugal’s political parties in opposition suddenly have common ground: none of them like the government’s latest measures billed as attempts to tackle the housing crisis, and most appear to think that social democrats are living in an alternative reality.
Yesterday (Sunday), André Ventura, leader of right-wing CHEGA, accused the prime minister (who announced the policies last Thursday) as being “out of touch with reality”.
“He is a prime minister who is increasingly out of touch with the reality of young people, house rents, immigration, and the country in general,” said Ventura at one of the many pre-campaign events ahead of municipal elections on October 12 that were going on throughout the country.
A bit like the irate grandmother in São João de Madeira, Ventura showed himself to be perplexed by the notion that a rental of €2,300 per month could fall into the bracket of moderate, in a country where average earnings barely reach €1,800 a month.
With the PS/ PAN/ PCP all questioning by the measures, it certainly hasn’t helped that instant enthusiasm was reported from the sectors of construction and real estate. Such approval can, in the eyes of many, only mean one thing: there is money to be made (which is exactly why the country’s housing situation has become so critical).
Aside from insisting that everyone is ‘becoming confused’ by the measures, the government’s response has been one of criticism.
PSD secretary-general Hugo Soares, for example, has accused the PS of ‘creating confusion’.
At a campaign event in Lamego, he set about presenting the government’s housing blueprint as “a kind of fiscal bazooka”, stressing that the tax reductions for construction are intended for rents “up to” (até) €2,300.
He stressed the word ‘até’ several times.
“There are people who still don’t understand the ‘A’, ‘T’, and ‘É’, up to €2,300 of rent. What does this mean? It means that from €400 to €2,300, everyone who owns and puts on the market houses with these values will have this tax benefit,” he said.
“The political country” and, in particular, the leader of the Socialist Party, José Luís Carneiro, have deliberately latched on to the €2,300 to create confusion among the people, he said.
“I believe that the Socialist Party really wanted to create confusion, saying that the government thought that rents should be set at €2,300 and that we thought that €2,300 was a moderate rent,” he said, adding that, to the PS, “it is an affront to not know that the middle class needs help.”
For Hugo Soares, “it is an affront to not know that the Portuguese, the doctors, the senior technicians and the teachers need a home to live in, just as the people of Baião, Lamego, Porto, Amadora, Lisbon and Sintra do.”
Again, this criticism somehow fell flat as certainly teachers, doctors and senior technicians are regularly bemoaning the salaries they receive, thus it seems unlikely that even they would be content to stump up such a figure for a monthly rental in Lisbon/ Porto or the Algarve (the places outlined by the prime minister as charging the highest rents).
Hugo Soares’ fury however covered other aspects – suggesting that CHEGA was fielding ‘fake candidates’ in the municipal elections. He later had to explain that he did not mean the candidates themselves were ‘fake’, but more that they lived outside the areas they were standing for, and in some cases, didn’t even know the areas they were standing for.
All in all, the government appears to have been caught off-guard by the level of antagonism towards their latest housing measures, which will need the support of opposition parties in order to reach the statute books.
source material: LUSA
