The parliamentary leader of CHEGA, Pedro Pinto, announced today that his party will vote against the proposed State Budget for 2026 in the final overall vote, scheduled for Thursday.
In so doing, CHEGA – always described as ‘extreme right’ – will be throwing its weight in beside the likes of extreme left wingers PCP (communists) and Bloco de Esquerda, not to mention the more regular left (LIVRE/ PAN) and liberals (Iniciativa Liberal) which have already labelled the document as one that “hoodwinks the country” by delaying essential reforms, continuing to spend too much, and living on propaganda”.
CHEGA will also be doing a little more, stresses Pedro Pinto.
The party will be showing up the PS (Socialist Party) which has said it doesn’t like the budget, but which opts (‘for reasons of stability’) to abstain, not to vote against like the rest of the opposition, and bring the budget down.
“When you get up to abstain from voting on this budget, we will vote against it. That is the big difference. We are consistent. You are not consistent. You criticise the budget, saying it is the highest tax burden ever, but then, when it comes time to vote, you side with the PSD. Socialist demagoguery and hypocrisy,” said Pinto today.
By abstaining, the PS essentially ensures that the budget will pass.
This is a document that has been described by CHEGA’s polar opposite, the PCP, as a budget that does not serve the workers, pensioners, families or the younger generations. It doesn’t even serve the economy, “even though it services the interests of the large economic groups”, said the party’s Alfredo Maia earlier this month, stressing that simply in IRC (business) taxes, the government is giving way more than €2 billion.
The budget also “doesn’t resolve problems of disinvestment in the state school system, in the state health system, in public services in general.
“It also does not respond to the enormous deficit in public investment, the emptying and impoverishment of the interior and rural world, or tackle Portugal’s asymmetrical problems and the profound injustice in distribution of wealth which keeps two million people in poverty.
“This budget does not promote the development of agriculture and fisheries, nor the reindustrialisation of the country. It does not protect micro, small or medium sized businesses, shopkeepers or subsistence farmers.
“Even worse, it doesn’t resolve the enormous tax injustice nor tax evasion”.
On this basis, the PS decision ‘in the interests of stability’ looks somehow less noble, and more political – and this is clearly the message that CHEGA seeks to convey.
Source: LUSA/ PCP.PT
