The leader of the Chega party, André Ventura, affirmed the party’s readiness to engage in negotiations, emphasizing the importance of avoiding a political crisis over the State Budget. “Does anyone want another political crisis? Do we want to go to elections again in March or April next year? Is the country now living just to move from election to election?” queried Ventura.
Ventura made these remarks to journalists during an event in the Benfica parish of Lisbon, alongside Bruno Mascarenhas, the party’s candidate for the capital’s city council.
Today, Eurico Brilhante Dias, the parliamentary leader of the PS, accused the prime minister of normalizing the far right and selecting Chega as a preferred governance partner, in response to an interview by Luís Montenegro with Antena 1, where the executive head expressed surprise at the PS’s threat to break with the Government and remarked that Chega “is starting to show” greater responsibility.
André Ventura harshly criticized the PS, accusing the socialists of “pure childishness” and “immaturity.”
“When I hear José Luís Carneiro [PS leader] say that they will vote against the State Budget and that now the responsibility is Chega’s, fine, we will assume that responsibility and we will engage in dialogue to assume that responsibility for the sake of stability and the country,” Ventura stated.
While expressing openness to discussion with the executive over this document, which will begin parliamentary debate in October, André Ventura emphasized that in a democracy “there must be an alternative” and rejected being a “support for the Government.”
“We cannot fail to say that the PS is increasingly irrelevant from a parliamentary perspective, and this is a fact. This adds another issue: if the PS is increasingly irrelevant, there is an alternative to the PSD, and that alternative is Chega, which means Chega must also present itself as an alternative and not as a support for the Government,” he argued.
Asked about Luís Montenegro attributing a greater sense of responsibility to Chega, Ventura stated he does not seek praise but “work.”
“I do not live off the prime minister’s compliments or those of any politician. What I want is work, and I want the prime minister to show that work, and that work is demonstrated by cutting with the system, cutting with careerism, and cutting with favoritism. That’s how it is done, I prefer fewer compliments and more work,” he said.
