Committed to negotiating majority agreement for new left-wing government
Bloco de Esquerda (the Left Bloc) coordinator Mariana Mortágua has made a commitment today to “negotiate a majority agreement for a left-wing government programme” after the March legislative elections – stressing this will have to include “concrete measures to solve problems in health, education, housing and salaries”.
Barely two years since the former ‘geringonça’ (Left Bloc and PCP communists) enjoyed a similar agreement in a minority PS government, Mortágua said: “Portugal needs solutions to the problems that have been created, that have been maintained and that have often been exacerbated by the absolute majority.
“The Left Bloc is making a commitment to negotiate a majority agreement for a government programme that does what has never been done,” she said.
A vote for the Left Bloc will “guarantee that Portugal gets a majority committed to a left-wing programme; to measures that solve the problems that the absolute majority failed to solve and made worse“.
This, of course, is if PSD social democrats, and their AD alliance do not ‘win’ on March 10 – as polls have suggested may well be the case.
Mariana Mortágua listed the problems that her party will be seeking solutions for: housing, health, education, wages, climate and child and elderly care.
“We know that the mere sum of MPs does not in itself make a stable majority. That stability depends on concrete measures that reverse and correct the choices of the PS’s absolute majority,” she insisted.
The party’s electoral programme will be presented on January 20, and it will be “on the basis of these proposals and their public debate” that the Bloc hopes to engineer the “start of a decisive change for the people“.
Asked if she had ever discussed this willingness to strike an agreement with Socialist leader Pedro Nuno Santos, Mortágua replied she hadn’t.
Regarding the timing of her announcement – on the morning of the day in which the PS party congress begins – Mortágua said this is also the day following the meeting of the Bloc and so “the right time.
“The Left has a responsibility to give the country a horizon of hope. That was the responsibility we took on in 2015 when we signed an agreement with the PS to reverse right-wing measures. What is needed today is much more than that.”
Pointing out that “in 2019, the PS refused a written agreement and broke off dialogue with the Left“, Mortágua reiterated that the party’s commitment is to “negotiate measures to solve Portugal’s problems”.
“All the parties have a responsibility to say how they are going to solve each problem that Portugal faces, and this is the only way to have an electoral campaign that is transparent, that enlightens the country, that tells the country what each party is going to do in a scenario where nobody wants an absolute majority,” she concluded.
Source material: LUSA
