The PS deputy secretary general this Friday accused the former President of the Republic Cavaco Silva of “hiding the undeniable reality” about the country’s growth trajectory between 2015 and 2019 and of ignoring “relevant facts”.
This position of João Torres, “number two” of the PS leadership, was published on his Twitter account and came in response to an opinion piece by the former PSD leader and former head of state in the newspaper Público.
Professor Cavaco Silva wrote an opinion article today that hides the undeniable reality. With this government, we returned to a trajectory of convergence and growth: 2.8% per year between 2015 and 2019.
— Joao Torres (@jvstorres) September 30, 2022
In that article, Aníbal Cavaco Silva defended that the Prime Minister, António Costa, and the government need to get out of “immobility” to implement decisive reforms and put the Portuguese economy on the path of sustainable growth.
“(…) It is essential that opposition parties, civil society institutions and the media help the Prime Minister and the Government to break through the situation of immobility and find a way that will allow Portugal to return within 10 years to 15th position in terms of development among the 27 countries of the European Union where it was in 2002, after falling to 21st place in recent years,” said Cavaco Silva, who was prime minister between 1985 and 1995.
However, for the deputy secretary general of the PS: “Professor Cavaco Silva wrote another opinion article today that hides the undeniable reality”.
“With this administration, we returned to a trajectory of convergence and growth: 2.8% per year, between 2015 and 2019,” he insisted.
The PS deputy secretary-general also called for the country to “converge again in 2021, with Portugal being the fastest growing country in the European Union this year”.
“I admit that the will to be a protagonist is a bit, but at least one would expect that relevant facts would not be objectively despised,” criticized João Torres.
At the end of the morning, the party leader of the PS, Eurico Brilhante Dias, responded to Cavaco Silva’s article, through a note that he published on his account on the social network Facebook.
“Despite the evidence that shows the reality and that the numbers confirm, there are illustrious economists and finance professors who continue to deny. The truth is that, unlike what has happened to right-wing governments over the past 20 years, the PS is in power, GDP (Gross Domestic Product) has grown above the European Union average,” he wrote.
According to the leader of the socialist bank, the past seven years has seen “the biggest cycle of convergence” since Portugal’s entry into the euro and is “supported by exports at historic heights”.
“The government and the PS are on the side of the people, they are betting on reform policies that improve the incomes of Portuguese families, as has happened in recent years. The reform is not cutting and for us there is no growth without coherence ” , he added.
Source: DN
