“Within minutes, PS and PSD deputies will stand up to support a poor budget that merits the silent agreement of Chega. Hours later, the government will use the right’s support to approve the nationality law. And tomorrow, it will use that same support to approve a labor law that attacks the majority who work,” accused Mariana Mortágua at the close of the general debate on the proposed state budget for the coming year.
The leader of BE, who had already announced her vote against, insisted on the criticism that “there is a party that governs without defining the terms of the debate,” the PSD, “another that defines the terms of the debate without governing,” Chega (which will vote against the general budget), and a third that “without governing and without defining the terms of the debate signs the check,” the PS (which will abstain in the budget vote, allowing its approval).
“Chega organizes the system’s politics, PSD writes it down, and PS signs underneath,” she stated.
In Mariana Mortágua’s view, “to buy the self-proclaimed demanding abstention of PS, the government promises a tight budget, purged of references to IRC, labor, immigration and says this is good governance.”
“In truth, it is nothing more than a farce that did not last half an hour from the start of the budget debate, when the Prime Minister presented a document wrapped in discrimination against immigrants and attacks on job security. Chega, while walking hand in hand with the government, clings to whatever it can to oppose the budget,” criticized the BE leader.
Mortágua continued, stating that PS congratulates itself “with the fact that the budget hides the policy that the Prime Minister assumed in the budgetary debate,” making viable “the main instrument of governance.”
“And while the three largest parliamentary benches play this dangerous game, the budget exists. (…) Against games and farces, in this budget and in the debates that will follow, we will be here to say what matters: this people deserves to have a house and a salary that can pay for it,” she declared.
