The chair of the Liberal Initiative’s (IL) executive committee said on Sunday that the prime minister “has done everything he can” not to believe the government will obey the legislature and has proved incapable of running its own executive.
“The one who has done everything possible not to make us believe that is the general secretary of the PS and the government as a whole. We have a sequence of events that show that António Costa is incapable of leading his own government lead,” replied Lusa Rui Rocha in Arouca, Aveiro district, when confronted with statements by the prime minister.
António Costa assured Saturday in Viseu in an action by the PS that, despite the fear of “many people” and even if his “muscles” hurt during the course, he will reach the end of the “marathon” of the legislature in 2026 .
But for Rui Rocha “the government is completely exhausted”.
“There were already 13 leaders who left the government in less than a year. It’s not just the loss of leaders, now the government is losing secretaries of state, that’s what happened to the Secretary of State for Agriculture, who was finally lost in the midst of of this process of absolute uneasiness of the government management and to this is added a series of policies which, in the assessment of the liberal initiative, are harmful policies for the country,” said the leader of IL.
Rui Rocha stressed that Portugal is an “economically stagnant country” with “a birth rate that is a ticking time bomb” and that “these are all signs of António Costa’s inability to run the country, to bring prosperity to the country, to bring development” .
For the IL leader, the time of António Costa is over: “If António Costa wants to keep himself in power, if he understands that he has conditions to reach the end of the legislature, our evaluation is different”.
“We understand that there are no more conditions for António Costa to rule Portugal. Every day he rules Portugal is a worse day for the Portuguese,” he concluded.
message on arrival
While the Chega convention is taking place in Santarém, Rui Rocha warned André Ventura’s party that he will mark “all the rules” that he understands and that in the party “the members”, the organs and himself “are in charge.
Chega’s leader said on Saturday that for the party “there is only one entity that defines what the red lines are, and that entity is not called Luís Montenegro.” [líder do PSD]nor Rui Rocha [líder da IL] nor Augusto Santos Silva [presidente da Assembleia da República]nor Antonio Costa [primeiro-ministro]is called the Portuguese people and only they will establish the red lines of Portugal and the Chega party”.
Decisions about WYD “little reasoned
Asked about the controversies surrounding World Youth Day, in particular the value of the podium where Pope Francis will celebrate the final Mass of the event (about 5 million euros), which will take place in Lisbon from August 1 to 6, Rui Rocha denounced a “series of unfounded , hasty decisions” and believed that “nothing had been done” to adequately prepare for the event.
Rui Rocha, recalling that Portugal knew it would host that event four years ago, said these “big events” are “always presented as huge benefits for the country” but afterwards they don’t go as planned.
“But then the fault is always, always in the organization, in the timely preparation, in common sense, in what is the necessary equipment or what is not needed,” he said.
Source: DN
