PS Socialists “genuinely don’t want elections, but…”
Sometimes, photographs say much more than the words around them. And this is the case of last night’s image (see above) taken of the prime minister (on the right) bidding his PS adversary goodnight after the latest meeting on the state budget.
The words, disseminated by state news agency Lusa, were: “We are on our way to viabilising the state budget”.
The photograph tells a different story. It hints at a PS leader under enormous pressure to ‘save the country’ from the utter madness of new elections while still wanting to ‘have his way’…
Thus while Lusa reported that “PS secretary general Pedro Nuno Santos said today that the country is on the road to viability of the State Budget, and values the approach that has been made by the government, having already presented a counter-proposal to the prime minister”, the reality was that on leaving the PM’s official residence, Mr Nuno Santos went straight back to Socialist Party HQ to work on a statement which he then delivered in the middle of evening news bulletins.
And the statement wasn’t all ‘sweetness and light in the spirit of rapprochement’.
As SIC explains: “Pedro Nuno Santos praised (the government’s) effort to get closer (to the PS’ approval) “but believes there is still room for improvement”.
He then set out what that improvement, in the PS’ perspective, would be.
Considering political commentators advised the country to hibernate until the state budget pantomime is over, this was the point where most viewers would have switched to a different channel. Suffice it to say, SIC admits the government is unlikely to accept Mr Nuno Santos’ counter proposal, believing it is ‘more political power play’, and possibly not even designed to finally approve whatever text is ultimately elaborated before the budget is presented to parliament on October 10.
For those still interested in what the stumbling blocks are, SIC goes back to IRS Jovem (the government’s plan to reduce taxation for the young) and IRC (its plan to reduce business taxes)
IRS Jovem: “PS agrees with almost everything”, writes SIC, largely because the government has decided to adopt the PS’ ideas. It has “given in to Socialists’ demands”, says the channel, but “not all the changes please the party. There is ONE POINT in which there is still disagreement: the government wants to extend the period in which IRS Jovem runs from five to 13 years (meaning the very young will be able to benefit from it in its entirety). The PS however wants it to run for only two years to start with, extending to five, then seven “without prejudice to a new evaluation”.
IRC is more problematic: PS Socialists “will not support a reduction from 21% to 17%, as the prime minister has proposed. They have come up with three ‘counter-proposals’
- “Either there is no reduction in corporate income tax in 2025 and it is replaced by the reintroduction of the extraordinary investment tax credit (ie support for companies that invest to a certain level)
- or the government implements the 17% reduction in 2026, 2027 and 2028 with an alternative majority – and with the opposition of the PS, without the party making its vote on the budget dependent this
- or the PS accepts a one percentage point reduction in 2025, with the commitment that in the following three years (until 2028) there will be no further reductions in the tax (albeit the extraordinary investment tax could be reintroduced).
Now the expressions of both men in the above photograph become much more understandable. They are both under orders to act as if everything is going in the right direction, when it patently isn’t (another reason why president Marcelo has cancelled his scheduled trip to Poland and Estonia).
For those who preferred the option of hibernation, it would be good to get back to it now.
For everyone else, there will be a meeting of the Council of Ministers on Monday, and a lot more water (and verbiage) flowing under the bridge in the run-up to Thursday (October 10).
Where this is going – exactly where President Marcelo has expressed he didn’t want it to go – is towards a scenario where the only ‘majority’ available to approve the state budget will be the government and CHEGA; a situation that might work in the short term, but which could, potentially, open another great big can of worms.
