At the opening of the debate, PS deputy Jorge Botelho assured that the socialists in recent 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 remains for their total elimination” as stated 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, yes, is welcome, we follow it because we do not have any negative coalition. The only coalition we have is with the Portuguese”, he said.
