Chega’s leader on Thursday accused the prime minister of wanting to turn the country into a “house of alterné”, a phrase that earned him a warning from the speaker of parliament, with António Costa opining that André Ventura intends to downgrade democracy.
In a first request for clarification during the debate on the state of the nation, which took place this afternoon at the Assembly of the Republic, the president of Chega addressed the recent operation led by the judicial policy to end a alleged network of illegal immigration and criticized the criteria for entry of foreigners into the country.
André Ventura believed that these people were abusing “automatic registration, which is a scam, it’s a mistake, it turns this into a hoax, where everyone enters Europe, registers, then walks around Europe saying they have a pre- has a contract of employment”.
In his speech, the deputy also said that Portugal is “the tenth worst paying country in the European Union” and believed that this is the state of the country that the Prime Minister led the country to.
“We don’t want to make the country this low-wage country, but a country that would be the best family home in Europe,” he charged.
This expression earned him a warning from the President of the Assembly of the Republic, Augusto Santos Silva, who considered it “absolutely excessive in a parliament”.
In response, the Prime Minister classified André Ventura’s intervention “as an illustration of what he described as the decline of democracy”.
António Costa did not refer to the issue of immigration, but pointed out on wages that “no one is claiming” that “Portugal is a country with low wages”, and “not even the employers’ federations”.
“And that is why we have set the goal and the target of this legislature to reach the end of the legislature with a weight of wages in GDP identical to the European average, that is to say rising from 43% where we will be in 2021 were up to 48% by the end of this legislature,” he stressed, indicating that the government is pursuing this target.
The head of government noted that the national minimum wage and civil servant salaries have risen and will continue to do so, providing a guarantee: “There will be no cuts or wage freezes with us”.
Source: DN
