The PSD president on Thursday accused the prime minister of denial and refused that the Portuguese live better, warning António Costa that “if the government does not change hands, it is necessary to change government”.
“Dr. António Costa has great political audacity and wanted to come and say in the debate on the state of the nation a denial of what we saw in the streets: that the Portuguese live better. They are not, Dr. António Costa” , said Luís Montenegro in statements to journalists at the end of the last debate of the legislative session, before the parliamentary holiday.
The PSD leader asked “which country António Costa lives in”, accusing the prime minister of disrespecting those who “have no money to pay their bills at the end of the month”.
“Arriving at the state of the nation and not having the humility to recognize this is unfortunately synonymous with the government not going to change the hand. Not changing the hand, what is needed is a change of government,” he defended.
In the opening speech in the debate on the state of the nation, António Costa left a snarl at Luís Montenegro.
“For us, Portugal is only better if the Portuguese are better,” he said.
In 2014, when he was parliamentary leader of the PSD, which ruled the country in coalition with the CDS-PP at the time of the ‘troika’ memorandum, a sentence by Luís Montenegro in an interview caused controversy when he stated that lives are no better, but the country is much better”.
Montenegro lamented that António Costa, “influenced by his publicist”, “wanted to make a joke about what someone said in 2014” and still has an obsession with the devil, in this case a phrase made famous by the steps of former prime minister Pedro Rabbit.
“It is necessary to respect people’s suffering, it is necessary to respect those who today are on low wages and earn the minimum wage, respect those who have no money to pay the house payments, respect those which Dr. António Costa withdraws on taxes and returns in poor quality public services,” he criticized.
Montenegro stressed that he “walks on the streets every week, in all regions of the country” and comes into contact with a different reality than that of the prime minister.
“Businessmen who are suffocating on taxes, tired of bureaucracy, looking at the 50 billion euros coming from Europe and whose main recipient is the public administration to fill the lack of public investment of recent years,” he criticized.
The PSD leader also tried to dismantle the Prime Minister’s and the PS’s repeated claim that his party is not presenting any alternatives.
“The PSD has been putting forward proposals in recent months on taxation, health, housing, policies for the elderly, for the young, to retain immigrants. We even have a website, the Prime Minister should go there and consult it,” he joked.
For Montenegro, the polls that place the party club by club or even the PS show that this alternative is “increasingly achieved” for the Portuguese, after a year and a half ago, the PSD lost the parliamentary elections by 14 points.
“It is a sign that the Portuguese are aware of the merit of the government and the merit of the opposition,” he said.
Source: DN
