Montenegro: if PS and Chega want to create “an alternative government” they must assume it “eye to eye” before the Portuguese

The president of the PSD and prime minister this Sunday challenged the leaders of the PS and Chega to say whether they want to create “an alternative government” and “legislate together”, considering that this must be assumed “eye to eye” before the Portuguese .

At the closing session of Universidade Europa, Luís Montenegro referred to the approval, last week, of most of the PS, BE and PCP proposals on the IRS, with the Government’s proposal ending up being reduced to the specialty without a vote, as with those of Chega and IL, at a time when their approval seemed to be in question.

“If what appears to be a sign of the first week happens, and the idea of ​​the PS and Chega is to simulate opposition to the Government by creating an alternative government, then they will have to accept this face to face with the Portuguese”, he challenged. Montenegro considered that the next campaign will be an opportunity to make this clarification.

“I was harassed in the last campaign to say what alliance policy I had for Portugal and I fulfilled it, I never heard the PS and Chega leaders say that they were going to legislate together in the Assembly of the Republic, take advantage of this campaign to make that clear” , he stated.

The PSD president said he wanted to focus the campaign on choosing the next European Parliament – even recommending voters not to vote for “specific causes” -, but warned that the AD will not be “indifferent to reality”.

“If the PS and Chega want to govern instead of the Government, then they have to come together seriously, and that’s what they have to say to the country (…) This is not a revenge for the legislative ones, but it is an opportunity for us all to show our coherence and what we truly want for the country”he said.

In the presentation of AD candidates to the Europeans on June 9, Montenegro left an outburst about the first weeks of government, which he projected for the next campaign.

“Let’s go into this campaign to do what we are doing in the Government: it’s remarkable, I’m really enjoying governing, and I’m really enjoying the reaction to our government. The great criticism they make of the Prime Minister and the new government is that we deliver on what we promised”, he said ironically.

Montenegro defended that, of the parties with the greatest representation, the AD coalition will be the only one “that will not have coherence problems” in the European campaign, in a new criticism of PS and Chega.

“We will be able to say in this campaign what we said in the past and in Europe what we say in Portugal. The PS will have a lot of difficulty saying why in Portugal it accepts having a vision of government and sharing the government with parties that do not trust the Union European Union and NATO”, he said.

Chega also, he considered, “will have to explain why it goes hand in hand in Europe with French, Italian and German parties that defend Putin’s Russian regime”.

The PSD president once again justified the choice of Sebastião Bugalho as head of the AD list — for his “youth, boldness, merit” -, and with a hint at the head of the PS list. “We are being consistent, once again, we did not go and look for a member of the Government that we fired way back when,” he said, in reference to Marta Temido, who presented the resignation of the executive led by António Costa in August 2022.

In the same vein, the president of the CDS-PP, Nuno Melo, praised Sebastião Bugalho as “one of the most talented young people in the media and political firmament”. “Since he accepted to top the AD list, he has become one of the most attacked. It’s the best of signs, these attacks happen because Sebastião Bugalho is feared”, said Melo, in an apparent pun on the name of the PS candidate, which provoked some laughter in the audience.

In the initiative, the majority of the active candidates and substitutes of the AD were present at this presentation, the ministers Paulo Rangel and Pedro Duarte, the secretary general of the PSD, Hugo Soares, and deputies and leaders of the two parties.