IL leader candidate Rui Rocha presented his list to the party’s executive committee on Saturday, promising that if elected, he will seek to cut government spending to 35% of GDP and propose a review of the school calendar.
At the presentation of the list, which took place in Lisbon, Rui Rocha emphasized that he has a “ten-year” vision for the country, unlike the other parties, “which are focused on the day-to-day administration, on the management of the clientele, on the occupation of the state apparatus”.
According to this vision, proposed by Rui Rocha, Portugal will not have “Romania surpassing it in terms of economic growth”, as it will have this growth “as the basis and principle of political action”.
“In the country that IL will present to the Portuguese, emigration is not a condemnation, emigration is an option, because IL will present to the Portuguese the country of merit, effort, work, demand, and the country where the merit is recognized and rewarded he promised.
Elaborating on the vision he wants to bring to the country, Rui Rocha stressed that “patients will not wait one and a half to two years for surgery at the National Health Service (SNS)” and “restrictions for health reasons will not be introduced by a mere public decision , without the prior intervention of the Assembly of the Republic, the courts and all entities called upon to pronounce”.
“In that country, the public or private character of the state service will not matter, but the service provided to the people who need it”guaranteed.
Rui Rocha also promised a country where “700,000 Portuguese votes will not be thrown away” and where “having a militant party card (…) will be a political option, but it will not be a career option”.
Rui Rocha criticized the fact that politics in Portugal consists of “empty, empty sentences” and wanted to make concrete proposals, starting by pointing out that, if elected, he would see a change to the school calendar in the first half of 2023 will propose. .
“The school calendar, as it stands today, penalizes the most disadvantaged because the summer school break is very long, learning is lost and it is the most disadvantaged who struggle to recover that learning,” criticized.
Rui Rocha also pledged to repeal the general urban building regime, which he viewed as “an obstacle to the existence of housing for the Portuguese who need it”.
In economic terms, Rui Rocha underlined that IL is concerned “with the future”, and therefore intends to “start a journey, with legislative initiatives, to ensure that government spending rises from 48% of gross domestic product (GDP), as it is today, to 35% within a reasonable timeframe.”
“This is to ensure the future of our children and grandchildren,” he stressed.
At the head of a list in which 13 of the 24 effective members depart from the current direction of João Cotrim de Figueiredo, Rui Rocha emphasized that the message he wants to convey with the chosen names is that “at IL, success is valued, it is the people who succeed.”
“We are not ashamed of success, we like success, success is here too,” he exclaimed, with some of the militants on his list behind it.
However, Rui Rocha acknowledged that there are aspects that “could work better in the party”, promised “some internal changes”, namely through the creation of new departments in the executive committee, such as one dedicated to internal communication and another to training.
“There are things that can actually work better in the party and we want to fix them very quickly after identifying these things, because our fight is out there, our fight is against the PS, against socialist policies. We want to fight against the PS”, he exclaimed, to the applause of the audience.
In a speech in which he never mentioned the name of the her opponent in the dispute for the lead, Carla Castro, Rui Rocha guaranteed that if elected, there will be a “guarantee of the total independence of the IL from all interests and lobbies that might be interested in a docile, malleable and manipulable IL”.
Source: DN
