The general secretary of the PS, Pedro Nuno Santos, considered, this Saturday, that the “no is no” of the PSD leader, Luís Montenegro, in relation to Chega “does not exist” for the social democratic parliamentary leader, Hugo Soares.
“In the opposition we have already done more than they did in the Government”, said Pedro Nuno, highlighting that parties have the “right to present proposals and fight for them to be approved” and that this is precisely what his party is doing, giving as For example, the end of toll payments, generally made possible in parliament on Thursday.
The secretary general said that the PS will not allow itself to be annulled or imprisoned, indicated that the socialists will present “many more” initiatives in parliament and once again rejected “alliances with the extreme right”.
“Now, we don’t stop presenting the proposals we believe in because there are other parties that will vote in favor of them, that’s what was missing”, he highlighted.
The PS leader was speaking at the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Socialist Youth (JS), which took place in the municipality of Almada (district of Setúbal).
Indicating that, in the last legislature, the PSD voted alongside Chega “300 or so times” and that “just yesterday [sexta-feira] the parliamentary leader of the PSD came there to admit that he negotiated with Chega”, Pedro Nuno Santos highlighted that “the one who is negotiating with Chega is the PSD”.
“In fact, the story of ‘no is no’ doesn’t exist, at least for Hugo Soares, because he went to negotiate”, he argued.
Pedro Nuno Santos also spoke about the issue of housing and admitted that the last PS governments were unable to respond to this problem, which he classified as “serious, serious and transversal to the whole of Europe”.
The PS secretary general defended a commitment to expanding the public housing stock, arguing that “this is the most important response” that can be given, and regretted that this is not “a priority for the right”.
The socialist leader also accused the Government of wanting to “do something that is counterproductive” and which involves “removing restrictions on part of demand”.
For Pedro Nuno Santos, this will “increase demand, increasing pressure, it will not solve any problem” and, “very likely”, will make it worse.
“We will be here to show that their policies did not produce the results they promised, they worsened the housing problem”, he highlighted, stating that “the right has no solution for young people’s wages nor for the problem of young people’s housing”.
This Government “has no solution for anything”
Pedro Nuno also considered that the PSD/CDS-PP Government “has shown that it has no solution for anything, other than changing logos, they have no solutions to solve the problems”.
In his speech, before a room full of young people, the PS secretary general argued that “there is no young IRS that can solve the problem of low wages” for this part of the population and considered that right-wing proposals to lower taxes “always benefit a lot more who receives more”.
Saying that it is necessary “a more modernized economy, which produces more added value and is able to pay better salaries”, Pedro Nuno Santos stated that it is “a mistake to think that the salary problem can be solved by reducing taxes on companies”.
In a message released on the party’s social networks regarding the celebrations of JS’s 50th anniversary, the president of the PS, Carlos César, considered that the PS must contribute to alleviating “inequalities at all levels, those that have persisted and those that have emerged, to reinforce access to goods and services essential to well-being, security and freedom of choice, or, for example, to prevent the exceptionalities generated by the climate crisis”.
“We were in government and we did that. We are, for now, in opposition, but we must continue to do so without losing rationality, but with the greatest vigor”, he highlighted.
The president of the PS also defended that nowadays “it is still necessary to be careful not to return to repressed forms of the past, which today are covered up in the disguised programming of political movements and deceptive party forces”.
