“What the Prime Minister did is morally Machiavellian,” Paulo Rangel tells DN about the package to help families because of inflation. The PSD Vice-President and the MEP insist that the “funded cut of a billion pensions, especially in times of crisis, has caused Costa to break trust with the Portuguese”. Rangel assumes this must be a point not to be dropped by the opposition or its leader, Luís Montenegro.
Paulo Rangel, who participates in Ponta Delgada, in the PSD’s first interparliamentary meeting, sees the insistence of the President of the Republic to know the economic forecasts for the coming year exactly the “quest for that truth”.
“What Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa is doing at the moment, with the caution and subtlety that the position imposes on him, is repeatedly asking the government to tell the truth.” Because, he insists, “what moral authority does a prime minister have to use an aid package at a time of expediency and cunning to escape a austerity he is about to implement?”
In a government that says “exhausted and in a way that cannot be imagined in such a short time”, Paulo Rangel says economic projections will show that the war in Ukraine carries a price for Europe that cannot be softened. Not even with the “illusionism” of António Costa.
“It is necessary to tell the people that what is at stake in the Ukrainian war is the new way of life, an existential threat that kills people every day, and that costs money,” he stresses. The tangible costs of rising inflation and interest rates.
But this defense of European democracy, which combines citizens’ freedoms and guarantees with the welfare state, is essential for the social-democratic MEP and “must be explained to citizens”, before causing fatigue and despair in the face of the worsening economic crisis. “The far-right movements grow and find fertile ground if governments don’t tell the people the truth,” he assures.
The PSD leader also criticizes the fact that Costa, “a friend of Macron” has no influence with the French president regarding the energy interconnections of the Iberian Peninsula. “So kind and loyal that he belongs to Macron and cannot convince him,” he says. Because, he says, in addition to the need for a “robust family support package” it is necessary for countries to invest in the long term to get out of this energy dependency on Russia and “without national selfishness like France’s”.
For Paulo Rangel “there will hardly be” a European response to the inflation crisis and the pre-announced economic recession. “But for the time being, the European Commission recommends a reorientation of resources from the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR)”. But, he assures, “the Portuguese government has shown utter incompetence in managing these funds, which are used for public investment rather than to support the economy and businesses”. The management of the PRR, he emphasizes, “is a total failure”.
To conclude this 1st PSD Inter-Parliamentary Assembly, the Social Democratic leader came to Ponta Delgada, where at the dinner that would take place at the closing time of this edition, he promised to come back to the criticism of the government for the tax zigzag austerity measures, namely the IRC.
During two visits to a company and a farm in S. Miguel, Luís Montenegro came back to the idea that it is necessary to tackle the problems of the Portuguese. “Some political agents are out of touch with reality,” he said.
Source: DN
