Today’s motion has been tabled by PCP communists
In what to outsiders may look like a kind of groundhog day within a turgid soap opera, parliament will be debating and voting on the second motion of confidence tabled against the government in less than two weeks.
The immediate consequences are expected to be minimal. National media is reporting that the “motion is guaranteed to be voted down” as the main party in opposition, PS Socialists, have indicated that they will vote against it.
This is all connected with the ongoing ‘political crisis’ involving the prime minister’s ‘family business’ which he claims he has been completely transparent about, and his opponents suspect that he hasn’t.
Today’s motion has been tabled by PCP communists – and in many ways, it has been seen as ‘saving the government’ from the ‘threat’ trailed by the prime minister on Saturday, that he would table a motion of confidence if parties were not satisfied with his explanations so far.
By saving, as the finance minister explained in what looked like a hasty u-turn late on Saturday night, there will be no need for a motion of confidence if the House votes against the PCP motion.
But a lot since then has moved on, and PS Socialists have made it clear that they mean to keep up the pressure on Luís Montenegro until such time as they feel this matter has been properly clarified.
Today’s motion follows a motion, also vetoed, by right-wing CHEGA. The debate is scheduled to begin at 3pm and will follow the same format as the discussion of the CHEGA motion 12 days ago, with an expected duration of three hours.
PCP secretary-general, Paulo Raimundo, will open for 12 minutes, with the same amount of time for the prime minister. There will then be 134 minutes for parties to ask the government for clarification – in order of registration – with each side having five minutes for the first question.
As reports have explained, “if the motion of censure were approved, it would imply the resignation of the government”. But as approval is unlikely, it won’t – and we will all be subjected to a great deal more in the way of political machinations over the same story: the PM’s family business, and whether or not he has been entirely honest about it (which he says he has…)
To give the PCP its moment in the spotlight, the motion is entitled ‘Halting national degradation, for an alternative policy of progress and development’.
The party argues that “the succession of facts that accumulate involving members of the government and the prime minister himself – without new elements that dispel or remedy facts that remain unclear – are not the work of chance”.
“They translate and give expression to a mixture between the exercise of public functions and private interests, and to the promiscuity between political and economic power”.
For the PCP, “beyond the seriousness of the deplorable facts and events, it is important not to forget the essential issue: that of the government’s policy which, instead of solving the country’s problems, is itself the main and primary problem”.
Put another way, if one fell asleep today and woke up tomorrow, Portugal’s politicians will still be fighting about the same thing, without any marked change in the situation.
