Marques Mendes: “It will not be possible to 100% satisfy the demands of teachers, doctors, police and military personnel”

The Amending Budget does not yet have a text, but approval will already be assured. And for Luís Marques Mendes, if the “lightness” with which parties admit to voting against or in favor is “confusional”, this position is also an “advantage” for the Government. “It will not be possible to 100% satisfy the demands of teachers, doctors, police and military personnel. There is no money for everything.” As a result, he anticipates “some contestation” and in this scenario “it is always better to have the ‘endorsement’ of the PS and Chega than not to have it”.

In the usual opinion space on SIC’s Jornal da Noite, the commentator anticipated the challenges that the new Government faces. Among them international instability, particularly with the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as the possible re-election of Trump in the USA. It will also have to deal with the cooling of the European economy, the “outbreak of strikes in Portugal” promoted by CGTP and the new European debt management rules.

But there is also signs of hope, such as the decline in inflation, the gradual reduction in interest rates (expected from June), the improvement in GDP and low unemployment. There is also “some budgetary slack”, which Marques Mendes believes “is not as big as imagined” and the PRR, which will tend to “go into cruising speed” in the coming months.

Above all, the Government will have to “get the economy growing” in the sustained way that AD promised in the campaign, promote tax relief and strengthen the social state (SNS and housing). The commentator also defends the need for a new Social Agreement (for productivity and wages) and a reinforcement of fight against corruption, and it is urgent to reestablish trust in institutions. “The next Government will not be able to escape” this issue.

Emigration election results

Marques Mendes also commented on the “most relevant political fact” of the emigration electoral results. By not being elected, Augusto Santos Silva leaves “through the small door” and “through his own fault”, says the SIC commentator. “He IS a very intelligent person, but he has made three mistakes in the last few years,” he adds.

The first was to stop being Minister of Foreign Affairs, a position “where he was ‘cleaning up’ the bad image he had brought from the Socrates era”. The second was becoming president of the Assembly of the Republic and the third was the way he did it. “He had no profile for the position and held the position with arrogance and tension. All of this is paid for in politics”although, emphasizes Marques Mendes, none of this means that he cannot return to political life.

Speaking about the emigration vote, Luís Marques Mendes criticized the fact that 334 thousand voters elect only four deputies when in mainland Portugal there are districts with fewer people who elect many more. That’s why advocates an increase in the number of deputies elected abroad when there is a “certain normalization” in national political life. “It was fairer and a way to value the diaspora.”

Finally, Marques Mendes also commented on Chega’s “evident” great victory in this constituency and projects the implications of the result of these legislative elections. “Evidently, Chega will be a case in European and local governments”it says.

Particularly in the European competitions, the commentator admits a victory. O Chega is “very mobilized” and has “victory dynamics” that are “more in his favor than the AD or PS” in an election that will have a high abstention (as it is a long weekend).

If the AD, which now won “at a tangent”, does not win the Europeans, it will be weakened on the eve of negotiating the State Budgethe adds.