So defended the former spokesman of the Socialist Party, Vitalino Canas, in an interview with Observer thorough reform of the government.
“I have argued, although this was in the background of public debate, that it is necessary to thoroughly reform the structure of this government. Not one, two or three ministers, but a thorough restructuring of the internal workings. Sooner or later late it will be,” he said, citing the Spanish example.
“What happened in Spain is something that I think many socialists think should happen in Portugal: the Prime Minister, in a situation of deficit, of the erosion of his government, decided to take the opportunity to take charge about the way things are going and to lead the political agenda again. It is something similar to what António Costa, a very experienced, pragmatic and sharp-witted politician, knows sooner or later he will have to do. To move the political agenda again lead, take initiative and put things in order,” he added.
The former socialist leader also said Mariana Vieira da Silva is a “number two in the government” who “does not have enough political weight and is not sufficiently recognized by her peers as a real number two”.
The former spokesman also praised the performance of Pedro Nuno Santos in the parliamentary committee of inquiry, highlighting that the Prime Minister’s Deputy Secretary of State, António Mendonça Mendes, has taken great pains not to “formally deny” João Galamba, although he clearly showed some “discomfort for the Minister of Infrastructure who has implicated him in the controversy over the performance of the SIS.
With regard to the next presidential elections, he defends that the PS should have its own candidate and believes that the current President of the Assembly of the Republic, Augusto Santos Silva, would be “an excellent candidate” because “he is a politician in high level”. He does not have the same opinion of José Sócrates, with whom he no longer maintains contact.
Source: DN
