This Thursday, deputies approved a PS proposal to eliminate tolls on the former Scut. PSD and CDS voted against.
The socialist diploma had the support of Chega, Bloco de Esquerda, PCP, Livre and PAN.
The Liberal Initiative abstained from this proposal to eliminate tolls in the old Scut.
The PS bill now goes down to the specialty.
The PS proposal aims to end tolls on the A4 – Transmontana and Túnel do Marão, A13 and A13-1 – Pinhal Interior, A22 – Algarve, A23 – Beira Interior, A24 – Interior Norte, A25 – Beiras Litoral and Alta and A28 – Minho on the sections between Esposende and Antas and between Neiva and Darque.
This measure – which according to the socialists has a budgetary impact of 157 million euros – will come into force on January 1, 2025, according to the PS bill.
Several PSD deputies were in favor of this measure, but the leadership of the parliamentary bench imposed voting discipline.
Before the vote, the parliamentary leader of the PSD, Hugo Soares, challenged the parties to downgrade, without a vote, the proposals on tolls that are being debated, asking the PS to “put on the shoes of responsibility” in a “serious appeal to the dialogue”.
The PSD defends a gradual reduction in the value of tolls and not their immediate elimination.
Declarations of vote were presented by some deputies after the approval of the elimination of tolls on the ex-Scut.
PS and Chega want to “block and undermine the Government’s action”
The Government will now start contacting concessionaires. The announcement was made by the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, after the approval of the abolition of tolls on motorways in the interior and Algarve.
Speaking to journalists, Pedro Duarte assumes that negotiations with concessionaires will be more difficult now with this decision by parliament, and to the detriment of taxpayers.
“We’re going to start working on this from today. So far, the Government has not considered this possibility due to the cost it brings to the Portuguese. There are no Portuguese who like to pay tolls, but the problem is that this will be paid, not in the same way, but it will be paid and, perhaps, the cost will be higher. That’s why I talk about responsibility. Now, negotiations will be much more difficult than they were yesterday.”
The Minister of Parliamentary Affairs also accuses PS and Chega of being in collusion to block the Government’s action.
“What unites the PS and Chega is a desire to block and undermine the Government’s action”, says Pedro Duarte.
Pedro Nuno Santos recalls speech from the “country in thongs”
Pedro Nuno Santos refuses that the PS is blocking the Government’s action and states that the approval of the project that ends tolls in the former Scut is limited to enforcing the socialists’ electoral program.
Speaking to journalists in Parliament, the secretary general of the PS said that a party that simply fulfills what it promised cannot be accused of blocking.
“If the proposal to eliminate tolls on the ex-Scut roads was not in the PS electoral program, then we would have a problem. We only presented and submitted to a vote a proposal that appeared in our electoral program. They cannot ask the PS not to fulfill what it promised.”
Pedro Nuno Santos remembers the country’s speech in a thong
Pedro Nuno Santos also accuses the Government of preparing the field so as not to fulfill the promises of the electoral campaign. Proof of this are the statements made by the Minister of Finance, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, about the deficit, he says.
The socialist leader compares what Miranda Sarmento said to Durão Barroso’s “thong” speech.
“At the end of these 30 days we removed a change in logo, a proposal to reduce IRS that turned out to be false, the promotion of instability in some public administration services without explaining in a full and convincing way the reason for these replacements and now we have on the part of the Minister of Finance, a dramatization of the situation of public accounts that is reminiscent of the loincloth speech by former Prime Minister Durão Barroso. Therefore, the preparation of the political terrain in Portugal so that the PSD does not fulfill the promises with which it presented itself for elections”, declared Pedro Nuno Santos.
The socialist leader promises that one of the promises he will fulfill is the presentation of a proposal to lower VAT on electricity to 6%.
PS accused of hypocrisy by the right
During the debate, the PS was accused by the right of hypocrisy, incoherence and irresponsibility for proposing to eliminate tolls in the former SCUT after years of government in which it refused, but the socialists responded that they only promised this abolition in the last electoral program.
The debate was marked by exchanges of accusations between the benches, in a tense environment and with many asides.
At the opening, PS deputy Jorge Botelho assured that the socialists in the last governments fulfilled the proposals they put in their electoral programs and made a gradual reduction of these tolls, proposing “now to reduce the 35% that is missing for their total elimination” as included in the electoral program of the last elections under the leadership of Pedro Nuno Santos.
“The advantages of eliminating tolls are very evident and are a factor of social and territorial cohesion. The costs are estimated at 157 million euros and were accounted for in the macroeconomic scenario that served as the basis for the PS’s last electoral program in the last elections”, he argued.
The socialist said he is waiting to see how the remaining parties “will vote on this initiative and check how coherent they are about what they have been saying recently”.
When Jorge Botelho used the expression coherent from the benches on the right, there were many protests.
For the PSD, three deputies requested clarification from the PS deputy at this stage of the debate, with Emília Cerqueira responding on the issue of coherence that for “those who are not ashamed, the whole world is theirs” and accused the PS of irresponsibility by not having fulfilled what he promised when he was Government and “anything goes in opposition”.
Carlos Silva, from the PSD, did not mince words and considered it to be an “act of hypocrisy and pure demagogy”, in addition to “immaturity and political incoherence”, accusing the socialists of “argumentative somersaults” and asking Pedro Nuno Santos Why, as Minister of Infrastructure, did you not abolish these tolls?
For IL, Carlos Guimarães Pinto responded to this question of coherence with the PS’s history in voting on the abolition of tolls, reading the names of the various initiatives over the years and ending, in the end in chorus with several right-wing deputies, with a “ against, against, against.”
For the CDS-PP, Paulo Núncio considered that the “PS proposal to eliminate tolls should be entered in the book of the greatest hypocrisies and falsehoods of this parliament”, accusing the socialists of, as a Government, not only not having abolished tolls but having always voted against.
Pedro Pinto, from Chega, accused IL of being equal to the PS “in demagoguery and hypocrisy” and pointed out “this PS’s lack of shame” which when it was in the Government said that this elimination was impossible and now, in the opposition, it says be possible.
“The Portuguese do not deserve to pay tolls. (…) This bill is welcome, we follow it because we do not have any negative coalition. The only coalition we have is with the Portuguese,” he said.
[notícia atualizada]
