Carlos Moedas was the guest speaker at the dinner conference of the PSD parliamentary days, which run until Tuesday in the Assembly of the Republic, and assured that he will work with the PS board “with institutional loyalty” despite the criticism.
“But don’t count on me saying what the government wants to hear, I’m here to be a nuisance, I’ll always be a nuisance to the government,” he assured.
After taking stock of his first year in office, Carlos Moedas addressed national issues and outlined the party’s goal: pave the way for PSD president Luís Montenegro to become prime minister.
“Leadership is not just talking, it has no fancy words, it is not selling a product, leading is doing, anticipating, proposing. Today at Luís we have exactly that: Luís we want to follow you,” he said, emphasizing “the daring from the PSD leader on things like the social emergency program he proposed in August, or the airport, where he believes he has pressured the government to act.
Luís Montenegro attended the PSD Days dinner today, as did Vice Presidents António Leitão Amaro and Margarida Balseiro Lopes, in addition to Secretary General Hugo Soares, who attended the opening.
As an example of what he called “the bewilderment of the government”, the mayor of Lisbon pointed to the case of TAP, which wants to privatize the socialist government, after it reversed the privatization carried out by the PSD/CDS-PP government which she integrated.
“So it’s nationalized, but for no reason, now it’s privatized? But do people understand this? I really didn’t understand,” he said, as this attitude “defines a certain socialism, a socialism that is not ashamed to say anything and the opposite”.
Carlos Moedas went further, saying that Portuguese politics is currently “experienced a ‘soft’ populism”.
“We have real populism, we have extremes, and we have to keep fighting these extremes, but there is also a certain ‘soft, light’ populism, which says what everyone wants to hear,” he criticized.
For the mayor of Lisbon, this attitude makes the difference with the PSD: “We were never afraid to say what we are and what we are going to do, we were never afraid to make difficult decisions,” he emphasized.
In his speech, Carlos Moedas again criticized the process of decentralization, which he labeled “half red”.
“We cannot have half-hearted decentralization where the mayors do what the government does not want, where the municipalities have the walls of the schools, but have nothing to do with what is taught there,” he criticized, emphasizing that the mayors “they are not workers of this government”.
Carlos Moedas asked PSD deputies to “be proud” of what the party is doing in Lisbon and recalled the night he himself was elected deputy for Beja, on June 5, 2011.
“Who could have told me that almost ten years later, on September 26, 2021, I would have one of the greatest joys of my life, of our life, of the life of the PSD, who won Lisbon,” he recalls.
The mayor congratulated the former secretary general, José Silvano, who coordinated the municipal process in 2021, and assured that “he will stay in Lisbon”.
“And now, as Manuel Acácio would say, here I am to stay, here I am to stay in Lisbon,” he said, referring to the moderator of the TSF Forum, a program he participated in when he was still a candidate for the chamber of the capital.
‘Passos Coelho has contributed and can continue to contribute a lot’
In a PSD/Lisbon initiative entitled “A Year of Autarchic Achievements”, a year after taking office as chairman of the capital, Carlos Moedas defended that former Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho has contributed greatly to the country and “can continue to contribute to anything he thinks he should contribute, but that’s a question he should ask Pedro Passos Coelho.”
Carlos Moedas has been questioned by journalists about statements made on Saturday by the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, in Amarante, that the country “still has to expect a lot from the contribution” of former Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho.
Without wishing to comment on the head of state’s statements, the former secretary of state emphasized that Passos Coelho “was a great Prime Minister of Portugal” and “is an extraordinary man”.
“He is an extraordinary person who has given a lot to the country,” he said. When asked if he could give more, Coins replied, “sure, sure.”
Source: DN
