The SDP chairman said on Tuesday that the nation’s condition is “serious” and that “the country is getting poorer,” appealing to the government’s “social sensibility, morality and humility” to use excess tax revenue for social support.
Speaking to reporters at the end of a visit to two social projects in Cascais, Luis Montenegro was asked about his diagnosis of the state of the nation ahead of a parliamentary debate on the subject.
“The state of the nation is serious, it is a state in which we are getting poorer, we are suffering from the consequences of the lack of transformation and reformism in Portugal,” he said, noting that while “the government is not to blame for the war,” inflation was already on the rise before the conflict in Ukraine and there was already “complete chaos in basic public services.”
Luis Montenegro provided several figures to support his claims.
“Now we are a poorer country because we have a lower growth rate, much lower than the average for all countries of the European Union, we have a per capita income of 21st out of 27,” he said.
“Worse,” he said, “is that “From 2016 to 2021, the years of PS’s sole responsibility and the years in which all countries were equally affected by the pandemic, Portugal’s cumulative GDP growth was 7.1%.” .
In the same period, according to him, in the cohesion countries, GDP growth averaged 18.3%, “that is, more than doubled.”
“During the same period, the socialist government brought the country to stagnation, dooming it to a more serious influence on the opportunistic difficulties that the war brought, it was not as well prepared as others, and the recovery of the Portuguese economy is much slower.” he criticized.
When asked if it was not a problem not to be in parliament to ask the prime minister directly, Luis Montenegro replied in the negative and took advantage of his visit to the institutions to repeat the call he had made to the government.
“Right now, the government has excess tax revenue far in excess of what it has estimated in terms of tax collection. It is a moral imperative that the government put this budgetary surplus at the service of those who struggle on a daily basis to pay their basic expenses,” he said.
Montenegro asked the government to show “social sensitivity, morality and humility” and issued a direct challenge to the prime minister.
“Dr. António Costa, look at those in society who are suffering the most from the rampant increase in the most needed goods,” he said, noting that this appeal can be made without being in a semi-parliamentary cycle.
However, the SDP leader stressed that he would be “following very closely” the debate, without specifying whether he could get through the Assembly of the Republic, and stressed that the party would be “very well represented” in parliamentary deliberations.
When asked about the vote received by the new SDP parliamentary leader, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento (less than 60%, far below most of his predecessors), Montenegro replied that the bench expressed “unequivocally its confidence in the leadership of the group in the spirit of a great democracy.”
“Compared to what happened at the beginning of the previous leadership cycle, the results were even worse,” he said, indirectly referring to Fernando Negrao’s 39% in 2018, after he replaced Hugo Soares at the behest of Rui Rio.
This time, also at the behest of Luis Montenegro’s new leadership, former SDP parliamentary leader Paulo Mota Pinto called for early elections, winning 92% of the vote in April.
Always accompanied by the Mayor of Cascais, the Social Democrat Carlos Carreiras and the Vice President of the PSD (and also the “vice” of this municipality) Miguel Pinto Luz, Luis Montenegro began by visiting the Bata Branca project in Sauda. Misericórdia de Cascais, which guarantees access to general clinic consultations for all residents without an assigned family doctor.
From there, the PSD president and his entourage traveled to Cozinha com Alma, a social project that sells takeaway food to the general public and whose recipes are used to support families in need (currently 70 to 80 years old).
Luis Montenegro shared his confidence with the person in charge, Cristina de Botton: “I cooked for 80 or 100 people at public dinners, I never advertised it.”
When asked by journalists what his specialty is in the kitchen, he explained that in such cases he had to resort to simpler dishes.
“Usually I make rojões, feijoadas, things that are best cooked in large quantities,” he said.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
