For now, PAN and Livre collaborated in the socialist narrative that the absolute majority does not correspond to the dictatorship of the majority. This Thursday, late afternoon, they were the only two opposition parties not voting generally against the government’s draft bill with next year’s State Budget (OE2023).
The diploma was approved with the positive votes of the socialists, the abstentions of the PAN and Livre (one deputy each) and the votes against of the other banks (PSD, Chega, IL, PCP and Bloco de Esquerda). The discussion now moves to the specialty discussion stage (article by article) and negotiations between the socialists will begin with deputy Inês Sousa Real (PAN) and Rui Tavares (Livre). With only two votes at stake – Inês Sousa Real, from PAN, and Rui Tavares, from Livre – this is irrelevant to the general accounts (the socialist majority of 120 deputies is more than enough to approve the proposal). However, the socialists do not want to ignore the image of an absolute majority of the “I will, I can and I command” type.
“If a government chooses as a scapegoat a group of Portuguese that justifies political options, as happened with the right-wing governments of the PPD/PSD and the CDS/PP, [isso] causes radical, confrontational speeches that endanger the stability of the political system, as is unfortunately clearly visible today in the far right in this Chamber.”
Last June, when the OE2022 was finally approved – on the second attempt, after interim sessions that gave the PS a majority – the PS counted on the abstention of the PAN and Livre, but also the abstention of the three PSDs. delegates elected by the Madeira circle. This time, however, the Madrid Social Democrats followed the voting instructions of the national leaders: vote against.
Concerned about pushing the PSD more and more to the right, always associating the party with the administration of Passos Coelho in the years of the Troika (2011-2015), the socialists, through their parliamentary leader, Eurico Brilhante Dias, rehearsed a new argument: it was the action of that government that boosted the rise and electoral consolidation of this new party phenomenon, Chega.
“If a government scapegoats a group of Portuguese that justifies political options, as happened with the right-wing government of the PPD/PSD and the CDS/PP, which pointed the finger at retirees and civil servants to justify cuts in pensions and wages, raise taxes, even when it proposed to lower the IRC and transfer earnings from employees to employers with the famous operation of the TSU (Unique Social Tax), a sense of social injustice and social disruption that has left part of the community to emigration and the other to frustration leading to radical, confrontational speeches that endanger the stability of the political system, as is unfortunately very clear today on the far right in this hemisphere,” said the head of the PS bank.
But just as the PS tried to push the PSD to the right, the Left Block tried the same in relation to the PS. On Wednesday, António Costa had accused the blockers of “hating the PS”. And this Thursday, the BE party leader answered him. First, he assured that “we have no hatred for the PS, nor for the PS, nor for the Prime Minister.” But then adding that “policy is hateful and impoverishment is hateful. And it is hateful to guarantee tax exemptions to employers and refuse to cut taxes for those who work [ou] think the market can do anything, preventing even families from having decent homes or young people from studying [bem como] say, as the right has said, to attack social security, that adhering to the pension law [com aumentos ao valor da inflação] could jeopardize the future of Social Security”. In short, the government presented itself with the “tricks” of “who claims to have the most left-wing budget ever and in practice copies so much of right-wing policies”.
“Well, may the prime minister treat the left-wing bloc with contempt” [porque] today, as in the past, it is the side we sleep best on.”
For the rest, the debate was what it had been on Wednesday: the socialists who are trying to protect Portuguese incomes from the inflation crisis and the opposition who argue that this is not the case. Once approved, the president of the republic would comment that “executing next year’s budget is more difficult than executing any other budget”. And this “because a war with the consequences of this one is more unpredictable than the pandemic itself”.
Source: DN
