Vetoes consecutive diplomas for professional orders, pushed through by PS Socialists
Portugal’s president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has been on what looks like a veritable ‘veto-fest’, refusing to rubber-stamp a series of diplomas pushed through by PS Socialists against the wishes of the professional orders affected by them.
This week has seen him veto three further decrees in respect of the Order of Physicians, the Bar Association (Ordem dos Advogados), and the Order of Nurses.
Last week, Marcelo vetoed the government’s proposed changes to the professional statutes of the Orders of Engineers, and Architects.
Each time a veto was posted on the official website of the presidency, detailed explanations were given as to the reasons why. Rejections focused on the benefits of the proposed changes, which Portugal’s head of State could not ‘see’. For example, in the case of the changes to statutes of the nursing profession, he wrote: “this Statute (as it was proposed) does not seem to safeguard the public interest, or contribute to the good functioning of institutions and, particularly, of the SNS national health service”.
He evoked the public interest (and how it did not appear to be being served) in his vetoes of the changes to the statutes of the Order of Engineers and Architects.
The explanations can all be found and read in detail on the official site of the presidency.
Today’s vetoes did much the same.
With regard to doctors, Marcelo believes that the training of doctors is compromised by the removal of the Order “from an essential intervention with regard to the recognition of the suitability and respective training capacity of the services, as well as the definition of the training contents for each speciality, aspects of a purely technical medical nature”, writes Expresso.
The background to this story is that changes to professional organisations are one of the reforms included by the government in the PRR (Brussels’-backed plan for recovery and resilience). They were already included in the memorandum of understanding with the troika.
“The aim of the reform should be to speed up access to various professions”, explains Expresso. “However, the process has taken a long time and has been hotly contested by the medical and legal associations” both of which have had the president’s ear.
In the case of the Order of Physicians, these changes were behind the breakdown of negotiations with the government over salaries and conditions. They are, in effect, part of the reason for the ‘chaos’ in the SNS national health service today.
But considering all this comes just as the government moves into management mode, ahead of the dissolution of parliament on January 15, will it ‘work’? Or will the PS still manage to tweak the decrees and re-approve them, in time for Marcelo to be effectively forced to promulgate?
This is the ‘big question’ and one which apparently PS Socialists are busy trying to work to their advantage..
Says Expresso, “the PS is preparing to get round the vetoes” and then, if the party is returned to power, in absolute majority, even coalition (with the more radical left), the professional orders will be stuck with the changes.
But there is something else further complicating the picture. If the changes to the professional orders are not settled before January 15, the next tranche of PRR money from Brussels will be ‘held up’.
Thus the ‘race is on’; it is almost a question of ‘who will blink first’ in a week in which criticism and recriminations are already clogging the air. ND
Source material: SIC / Expresso
