The President of the Assembly of the Republic this Friday considered the statement of discrediting the PS and PSD to be erroneous, defining the Portuguese Socialists as the most authentic expression of classical political liberalism and not as the liberal initiative.
These positions were defended by Augusto Santos Silva, as a socialist militant and PS deputy elected by the Fora da Europa circle, in a session promoted by JS, entitled “Jornadas pela Democracia no Século XXI”.
Before a few dozen members of the JS, at the national headquarters of the PS, with Miguel Costa Matos, leader of the young socialists, at his side, Augusto Santos Silva pointed out that the last parliamentary elections, in January 2022, “have strengthened the electoral weight of the two largest national parties”.
“Therefore, the idea that the PS and the PSD have lost all credibility, that no one believes in them anymore, that the Central Bloc is a disgrace, that the Portuguese no longer see themselves in the Central Bloc, has a small problem: it is in contrary to reality, as we know from the latest available objective indicator, today in parliament perhaps 90% of the deputies belong to the two largest parties, which has always been an advantage of the Portuguese system, by the way,” he insisted.
According to the former foreign and foreign minister, the Portuguese system has “registered a logic of alternation – and this alternation takes place in the center of the system and not in the extremes”.
“We have to be calm, because what the people out there tell us is very different from what we often hear in the newspapers or on television. What the people there tell us is that in Portugal the party system is very stable for the time being,” advocated.
Even with regard to municipal elections, where there are independent candidacies, the President of the Assembly of the Republic pointed out that this phenomenon has a diminished global impact.
“The triumphs of independent candidacies are the exception, not the rule. And we know that most independent candidacies are the result of internal conflicts in the parties with list building,” he noted.
Therefore, according to Augusto Santos Silva, the Portuguese system of political parties is “quite robust” — a point where he took the opportunity to leave a warning about the risks of a major change in the current electoral system.
“I strongly advise you not to go into siren song about very voluntary replacements of the electoral system, even if you hear the argument that 600,000 Portuguese votes have been lost, unused by the Hondt system. A good electoral system guarantees representativeness and controllability”, stressed out.
From an ideological point of view, Augusto Santos defended Silva before an audience consisting mainly of young socialists, a position he believed to be controversial.
“The strongest and clearest, most legitimate, most natural expression of classical political liberalism is social democracy, and in Portugal it is the PS. It is not the liberal initiative. There is a terrible confusion between classical political liberalism and economic liberalism and recently, neoliberalism,” he reasoned, before recommending Francis Fukuyama’s lecture.
“Democracy is not political liberalism. But democracy is the extension of political liberalism to universal suffrage,” he added.
He left a message to the parties to the left of the PS about the current political situation.
“I believe our friends on the left risk making a minor error of judgment when they define their main political goal as overthrowing the current government and changing the current composition of parliament,” he said.
If that happens, according to the former minister, “the progress made on civil and personal liberty would be blocked” by an executive led by the PSD.
“While our centre-right party calls itself social democrats, the vast majority of its decision-makers are anything but social democrats,” he said.
Source: DN
