Former President Cavaco Silva defends in an opinion article this Monday that the idea of ’correct accounts’ is an attempt ‘by the socialist power to mislead the Portuguese’ and to hide ‘the incompetence and low moral quality of some ministers’.
“It is (…) normal that citizens who are not specialists in this field have picked up the idea that ‘correct accounts’ is a primary objective of fiscal policy. However, it was a trap of the socialist power to the Portuguese, in which several well-meaning agents of the political and media space fell”, says the also former prime minister in an opinion article published in the newspaper Público.
According to Aníbal Cavaco Silva, the “true stories” were not only “the trap set up by the Socialist government to, with some success, divert attention (…) from the country’s serious problems”, but also “a attempt to hide the country’s problems’. the incompetence and low moral quality of some ministers”.
And he wonders: “Why has the Socialist government in recent years, through the persistent discourse of ‘correct accounts’, tried to convey the message that the budget balance, positive, balanced or slightly negative, is the main goal of the fiscal policy, while Isn’t it real?”
To the former ruler, “What the government intended was to condition the budget debate and political commentary, to divert attention and suppress the negative consequences of its policies”, giving examples of the “waste of public money evidenced by the sharp growth of the public expenditure, while at the same time witnessing the decline in the quality of public services provided to the citizens”.
In the article, the Social Democrat argues that “the monster of public expenditure has reached such a scale and inefficiency that its control will only be possible through the adoption of a zero-based budget, in which each public service must justify and substantiate the funds. ” requested for the new year, instead of based on the previous year’s budget”.
Cavaco Silva gives as an example “the degradation of the National Health Service”, the housing and public school crisis, “the chaotic, unjust, complex, unstable and internationally uncompetitive budget system, (…) low wages” and “the relative impoverishment of the country” .
“I hope that the government emerging from the early elections will put the budget balance in the right place, adopt an attitude of transparency and accuracy in the management of public money and realize that the current legislative process is in itself a source of waste and quite detrimental to effectiveness of fiscal policy in pursuit of its true objectives and reforming it, taking advantage of the studies carried out by the Technical Budget Support Unit (UTAO) of the Assembly of the Republic”, suggests the former Head of State (2006-2016).
Source: DN
