Chega believed on Thursday that the PSD is “already in line” with its immigration proposals, stating that if there are “racists and xenophobes” in parliament, they are in other benches.
“We are at least satisfied with one thing: it is that the PSD is apparently already in line with our immigration policy”underlined the deputy Rui Paulo Sousa in a political statement in the Assembly of the Republic.
Recalling cases such as the recent fire in Mouraria, in Lisbon, in which two immigrants died and 14 were injured, Chega’s deputy stated that some foreign citizens “live in misery and with great suffering”, considering that “this is the result of immigration ” in the country.
“But when Chega drew your attention to the situation of the country’s immigration policy over the past three years, you didn’t want to know”when “warned you about the dramatic situation in which an open-door immigration policy could change, your only reaction was to call us racists and xenophobes”criticized.
“No, ladies and gentlemen, if there are racists and xenophobes here in this parliament, it’s not us, it’s you.”Rui accused Paulo Sousa, assuming that the other parties “always ignored the problem and only now, after what happened in Mouraria, they suddenly remembered that it existed” and “ended up with the SEF”.
Chega’s deputy, who did not receive any request for clarification from the other parties, also referred to the fact that “the immigration quotas suddenly remembered by the mayor of Lisbon” had already been proposed by his party and regretted that in the case of Carlos Moedas not seen as racism or xenophobia, but as “concrete measures to solve the immigration problem”.
Also in a political statement in parliament, MP Carlos Guimarães Pinto, of the Liberal Initiative, stated that “Portugal is a centralist country” and “the central state has enormous weight in the Portuguese economy”.
“By concentrating almost all of the central administration in a small part of the country, the state also concentrates economic activity and employment in that part of the country, neglecting the rest”criticized.
Carlos Guimarães Pinto defended that “Portugal must decentralise, reduce the power of the central state and return it to local power”.
“But decentralization is not only about increasing local power, it also implies reducing the weight of the central state. We cannot accept the central state delegating powers to the local power and keeping the same resources in the central state. Taxpayers will not accept any process of decentralization, be it municipal or regionalization, if it entails doubling spending and not transferring with greater efficiency”he stressed.
The Liberal deputy felt it necessary to “move parts of the central administration”, he claimed “a central state that concentrates all its organs in Lisbon has no moral or political authority to ask companies to move inland”.
The PS agreed to the principle through deputy Agostinho Santa, emphasizing that the government had already approved incentives in the state budget for preferential installation within new state services.
“I don’t like to see the Institute of Viticulture and Wine itself there on the Terreiro do Paço side”he said.
Speaking to the PSD, deputy Luís Gomes criticized that decentralization “has been a mess” and “overshot all the deadlines initially envisaged”.
The Social Democrat pointed out that, within the framework of the state budget, the PSD presented “concrete proposals” in the sense of a “gradual decentralization” of services for “low-density areas” and regretted that they had been rendered impracticable by the PS.
Source: DN
