Parties left and right claim government has “deceived the Portuguese!”
With everyone who can heading for the beach, or welcome shade today, Portugal’s political parties are not letting up: the latest ‘fury’ focused on the new government’s tax relief, and how it is looking like a “hoax and a fraud”.
PSD parliamentary leader Hugo Soares has made the point of addressing all the claims with journalists in Braga today, insisting the prime minister hasn’t lied, and has always been “crystal clear” on the issue of tax relief, which will be decreasing for the nation’s citizens from now on.
The opposition must “prepare itself better, study what is being said and not follow in the footsteps of those who have made mistakes, blaming others, practising bad faith politics”, he said.
“The opposition has to get used to the fact that politicians are not all the same (…) there are those who are crystal clear” in what they say to the nation.
But, speaking earlier to Lusa, PS secretary-general Pedro Nuno Santos criticised the fact that Finance Minister Joaquim Miranda Sarmento had explained that the €1.5 billion in personal income tax cuts that had been announced by Luís Montenegro actually only represented around €200 million, as €1.3 billion in tax relief included in the State Budget for 2024 is already in force.
“We are facing a hoax, a fraud, a government deceiving the Portuguese! We’ve been warning for months that the measures, that AD’s candidacy was not credible and this is the first proof, the first moment when that is clear,” accused Mr Santos
“The fiscal shock promised by the PSD didn’t even last a day” since “of the €1.5 billion in tax savings announced by Luís Montenegro, €1.3 billion are the responsibility of the Socialist Party government.
“It’s serious, it’s a disgrace and it’s unacceptable that this happened at the time of the presentation of the government programme. We expect more explanations now from the Prime Minister,” he continued – hence Hugo Soares’ statements in Braga.
Elsewhere, PS parliamentary leader Alexandra Leitão has also condemned the situation as one showing the government has “no credibility”, while Bloco de Esquerda has added its voice to the sense of outrage: “The reduction in personal income tax is, after all, a hoax. The only promise that wasn’t a joke is the reduction in corporate income tax on the profits of large companies. After a week, the press is already apologising to readers for having believed Montenegro,” reads a post over social media by party coordinator Mariana Mortágua.
While Socialists are insisting on an ‘urgent debate’ with the finance minister in parliament on Wednesday, the right wing parties are equally scathing of how things appear to be panning out.
CHEGA and IL (Iniciativa Liberal) have accused Luís Montenegro of “hoodwinking the Portuguese”; IL totting up the figures, and claiming that the ‘fiscal shock’ amounts to little more than a saving of a euro per citizen.
AD is unlikely to agree with those calculations, but this isn’t going to ‘go away’: minister in charge of the Council of Ministers, Castro Almeida, has admitted to “miscommunication” and “some ambiguity”, but stresses that the additional reduction could be “€300 or €400 million” (not the €200 million cited by parties of the left).
All in all, a stultifyingly hot weekend has seen the heat considerably turned up on Portugal’s new government. IL leader Rui Rocha believes the ‘state of grace’ that incoming administrations tend to enjoy – usually for at least the first few weeks – has ended in AD’s case within 48-hours.
