The harsher words, many of which have already been used at other times, are repeated in each speech. And this time in what is the “last stronghold of the PSD” after the “great adversity in the last parliamentary elections”, Luís Montenegro, in a half-hour speech, at the end of the social-democratic parliamentary days in Madeira, brought the tone and fighting spirit and threatened to block constitutional reform.
“If the PS wants to keep everything the same and only change the two things that it considers most important [referência ao uso dos metadados pelas secretas e o poder-se decretar, sem recurso ao estado de emergência, medidas de isolamento] there will be no constitutional revision. This is very clear. Either it changes what is important to change or there will be no PSD compliance from any constitutional revision,” he guaranteed.
The Social Democratic leader guarantees that for a constitutional reform and an understanding with the socialists it is necessary “to remove the ideological ties that the PS stubbornly want to keep in the constitution”.
If the threat to the PS was “very clear”, the warning to the PSD of Madeira due to the “existing tension” due to the position of the Republic’s representative was surrounded by the explanation of the “traditional chronic difficulty “. “There are always areas of tension”, “the total convergence of views is not always easy” between “national and regional structures” and in the case of the proposed extinction of the Republic’s representative there is no “coincidence with the vision” of the Social Democrats of Madeira. What exists, Montenegro said, “is one more step” that is part of the “law of life”, but that does not please the parliamentary leader of PSD Madeira, who thinks, for example, that the proposal “was not happy”. nor is it what “Madeira and the Azores want”.
It is a “bewilderment” of “a PSD”, says Rui Caetano, parliamentary leader of the Madeiran Socialists, who “drives it purely electorally” [as regionais são este ano no final de setembro] made “a circus act around the revision of the Basic Law”.
the swamp
In 2001, after the defeat in the municipal elections, Guterres left the government to argue with the “political quagmire”. Years later, he assumed that if he had continued “there would have been a situation of paralysis, a swampy situation”. Now it is precisely the “swamp” and the “swampy situation” that Luís Montenegro uses more and more to define the state of the country.
“The Portugal of deceit, of deceit (…) the loss of credibility and political authority (…) a public administration completely taken over, even colonized. It is true (…) We have a very swampy political situation in Portugal today,” he says.
For the Social Democratic leader, “Worse than having a bad government is a bad government that thinks it’s good, that thinks everything is fine.” And if so, there is only one solution. “It is fast, but very fast” for the government to do what it “has to do” because “if it continues, if it continues on this path, we will even have to say that there are no conditions for it to continue” .
And given the argument already used by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, that there is no political alternative, Luís Montenegro rehearsed the speech, directed at António Costa, that “when the PS government ends, the world will not end. Changes. You have to not to be so close, they’re there like limpets, clinging there. You’ve had your time. You’ve had your chance. You’ve wasted it”.
And then he addressed the announced “certainties” that “our turn will come and we will be in the right place, at the right time to change Portugal, win the elections and govern Portugal (…) We are building the future in the preparation of our government, in the political alternative that is increasingly robust and more recognized by the Portuguese”.
Cavaco’s defense
and the “reality bath”
All journalists have been warned: today [esta terça-feira] the PSD leader would not answer questions, he would only give a speech. And again quoting Guterres – “people are not numbers, the Portuguese are not numbers – Luís Montenegro again left for an audience of “Lisbon” and “Madeira” deputies in defense of Cavaco Silva, arguing that if the PS “reacts like this fanatical, reacts so corrosively to the functioning of democracy, belittles his opponents with personal attacks, very base attacks, this only shows one thing: he is out of ideas, but above all he is afraid, afraid, nervous”.
And address Antonio Costa directly [várias vezes o fez no discurso] asked the question, in words of the Prime Minister, who immediately replied: “Artificial crises? But where do you walk? What field do you enter? What people do you listen to? the more than 1 million and 700 thousand Portuguese who do not speak a doctor u people standing at the emergency room door or waiting months and years for an appointment do you speak to the family who saw an 18 month old baby die due to lack of conditions for the SNS resources do you speak to the parents and grandparents of students who do not have a teacher? Are you speaking of the victims of the serious and violent crime that is on the rise?”. A succession of questions for a short answer to the “outspoken” socialist leader: “Take a reality break.”
Source: DN
