PS activist Augusto Santos Silva warned on Thursday that there is a “great risk” that the next government solution will depend on the far right and believed that José Luís Carneiro is the socialist candidate who best fits the current circumstances.
Speaking at the launch of the book “Ganhar o futuro”, which brings together chronicles and public interventions of José Luís Carneiro, in Lisbon, Augusto Santos Silva said that we are currently living in a “very difficult circumstance, even in its strangeness”.
The parliament speaker also said that the origins of the current crisis “are not political” and that the government has resigned “not because he has lost the confidence of parliament, the institutional solidarity of the president or the support of the population or the party that serves as his base”.
“But rather because Parliament was dissolved, because the President of the Republic understood that, due to the resignation of the Prime Minister, the parliamentary majority, coherent and solid in Parliament, had no right to propose an alternative Prime Minister”he said.
For Santos Silva, this crisis arose “unexpectedly” and the “group of ordinary people”, including PS activists and voters, “First of all, he is very surprised and perplexed, secondly, scared and, thirdly, some are a little disappointed, others even angry”.
“And that is why we run the risk of going from political stability, the political calm that the country experienced, to exactly the opposite: to a situation of unrest, instability, in which people could lose a large part of the trust they have in us . “he warned.
Santos Silva argued that this is necessary in this context “showing credibility, taking all sides into account, considering all variables at the same time” and ‘showing humanity’.
“And these, I think, are precisely the political qualities of José Luís Carneiros and these are really the essential political qualities”he defended, emphasizing that he is the PS candidate that best suits the current circumstances.
Santos Silva warned that in the current scenario “There is a huge, huge risk – it is better not to hide it or devalue it – namely the risk that the country will wake up on March 11 to a political situation in which the solution that the government presents to it depends on the extreme right”.
‘That extreme right that thinks that the blood of the Portuguese cannot be contaminated with the blood of Cape Verdeans, that thinks that foreigners are here to steal our social security, that the Portuguese can be divided into good and bad’he said.
For Santos Silva, “The only guarantee that the country does not become dependent on the blackmail of this power is to vote for the PS.”.
In this speech, Augusto Santos Silva also addressed the period of left-wing convergence between PS, PCP, BE and PEV, between 2015 and 2021, to explain how “people who were even ministers of ‘apparatus’, as was the case with him was, can “express doubts” about this government solution.
According to Santos Silva, the convergence to the left must be addressed not only in the ‘contraption’ period, between 2015 and 2019, but also after the 2019 parliamentary elections, in which, he said, the PS wanted to repeat this convergence, but “the partners did not” and “they even overthrew the government”.
“And that is why it is so important for us to defend the political autonomy of the PS: it is not for the PS to be arrogant and want to do things alone, it is not for the PS to despise others, (…) it is because the PS has the political conditions not to become dependent on those who pull the rug out from under them from time to time.”he said.
The current President of the Assembly of the Republic added that the Portuguese know that “they can count on the PS, because there is a government in the PS,” and stressed that throughout democratic history the party has found administrative solutions with the PSD. CDS, PCP, BE and PEV without losing their autonomy or “leadership of the political process”.
Source: DN
