Arriving for a campaign event in Macedo de Cavaleiros, Bragança district, the leader of the PS was asked about a recent announcement by Luís Montenegro regarding a supplement for the lowest pensions, which he had previously challenged the government to make a permanent increase.
“I believe that over the next 15 days [of the campaign], we will see a kind of drip-feed that expands electoral measures until the elections. I think that’s what’s going to happen because if the government had decorum, it wouldn’t have done what it did in the last legislative elections at the Bolhão Market,” he criticized.
While considering that “the government is obliged to duties of neutrality and impartiality in the exercise of its functions,” given the announcements made the previous day by the prime minister during a municipal campaign, Carneiro anticipated that “equivalent matters will continue from now until the elections.”
“Therefore, I would like to tell the prime minister not to feel inhibited, for example, from assuming that the extraordinary supplement for the elderly becomes a permanent appreciation of the lowest pensions, which are those up to 522 euros,” he insisted, a measure for which he already assured PS support if it proceeds.
The PS secretary-general has calculated this measure and said it will cost 400 million euros, the same as a one-point reduction in corporate tax.
Carneiro also accused Montenegro of “not speaking to the majority of the Portuguese people,” citing housing measures as an example.
“Two thousand three hundred euros is the net salary of a department director at a municipal council, which is already an elite of the intermediate state administration,” he compared, referring to the moderate rent value indicated by the government.
