Officers leave ‘cêntimos’ on pavement, in reaction to PM’s “not one cêntimo more” speech
Police officers, unable to get into the parliamentary galleries yesterday, followed the debate on their mobile phones, writes Lusa.
“It was around 6pm that votes in the chamber on proposals by various parliamentary groups to grant security forces a risk allowance on a par with that granted to the Judicial Police came to an end”, says the state news agency.
There was almost no reaction to the fact that nothing changed: proposals for increases were rejected, there was a lot of ‘heat’ generated between MPs, but for the police, nothing more.
The throngs outside started to leave, tossing cent pieces onto the pavement in reference to the PM’s speech the day before about “not a centimo more for security forces”.
Rui Neves, vice-president of the Independent Union of Police Officers (SIAP) admitted to being “deeply disappointed” – and that, yes, the way forward after this could well be further police protests.
“We’ll probably have to consider whether it isn’t time for the police to return to the struggle and take to the streets. Maybe that’s the way forward for the police in the face of the prime minister’s intransigence,” he admitted, guaranteeing that “police will not give up”.
This whole issue centres, he recalled, on an “injustice” created by the previous Socialist government.
Pre-elections, police were led to believe that many of the MPs who have now rejected proposals to rectify this injustice were behind them. “I won’t say (that we were) deceived, but we expected more. In the election campaign, many of the people sitting here today promised a lot to these professionals and maybe they defrauded them…” he said.
Frederico Morais, president of the National Union of the Prison Guard Corps, was also present in the galleries. As he left, he expressed “disgust and disappointment” at the attitude of the main political parties.
“The PS, which is to blame for this whole mess, had a chance here to try to put things right and give something to the Portuguese police. It didn’t want to”.
Prison guards are currently waiting to be called in by the government for another negotiation meeting, as will happen with the police next week, but Morais admitted to low expectations.
Source material: LUSA
