The president of the republic this Monday ruled out a scenario of the government resigning to form another executive with the same majority and assured that a possible departure of António Costa would lead to the dissolution of parliament.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa spoke to journalists in the former royal arena, next to the Belém Palace, in Lisbon, about the seven years since his presidential election on January 24, 2016.
On this occasion, the head of state reiterated that it makes no sense to dissolve parliament “in the current context of the war, the economic and financial crisis, the existing situation with an absolute majority elected in elections less than a year ago” and considered that ” the Portuguese understood most of them and so did the parties” his point of view.
Afterwards, he responded to those who proposed the scenario of “fire of the government” as an alternative to “test another government with the same majority”, stating: “And if the Prime Minister doesn’t want to? It’s dissolution of the government. That’s why is it a false solution”.
“This is something that in the Portuguese system implies an immediate conflict between the president and the government and so let’s be clear: at the moment it is unwise to think about the dissolution of parliament, and there are no middle ground he added.
In this regard, the President of the Republic took the opportunity to reiterate in even more definite terms that “if the Prime Minister changes, the Parliament will be dissolved”.
On March 30, 2022, when he inaugurated the XXIII Constitutional Government, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa warned António Costa that “it will not be politically easy” to replace him as head of government in the middle of the legislature, implying that in that case he would call for early parliamentary elections.
“If you change the prime minister, there will be a dissolution of parliament,” he said today, referring to the “theoretical hypothesis of the appearance of another prime minister from the PS area”.
“There was a dissolution of parliament, because this majority was formed with a prime minister who was not only leader of the party, but also leader of the government. It was very important, I said that in the inauguration speech and that’s why I was without reason, that is, with another prime minister, parliament would be dissolved,” he stressed.
According to the President of the Republic, at present “the existing path for the government to improve its administration is to correct what is not going well to go better” and “the opposition continues its path of opposition, of course more and more vigorously, because this is what is natural as election acts get closer”.
Source: DN
