The president of Chega announced today that he will propose in parliament an amendment to the government’s IRS bill to increase the reduction from 200 million euros to 1 billion euros.
“When this IRS proposal reaches parliament, we’re going to turn it into an effective proposal, with close to 1 billion euros of relief for taxpayers,” said André Ventura.
The Chega leader was speaking to journalists during a visit to Sagalexpo, an event dedicated to the export of Portuguese food products, in Lisbon.
André Ventura said that Chega will “seek a dialog with the PSD and the PS, who can form majorities, so that there can be much greater relief than Luís Montenegro’s government wants”.
“We had been told that we would have tax relief of around 1.5 billion euros, and now it turns out to be 200 million,” he said, arguing that there are “conditions for these 200 to be transformed into 1,000 million euros” in “the first year of the legislature”.
The president of Chega argued that “this increase has to happen now, precisely because there are economic and financial conditions like never before” to provide families with “very significant tax relief”, pointing out that “the tax burden is at historic levels”.
“I think it’s important, even from the point of view of public peace, to guarantee some situations and then fight for the right accounts. But to take advantage of this financial cushion to solve some problems,” he said.
Ventura considered that “this cut that the government is proposing is also a minor one” and said that “the PS has already had much more significant cuts than this and that’s not what the Portuguese sent the right-wingers for”.
The president of Chega said that he has not yet spoken to the PS and PSD and indicated that the party has “maintained an open dialog with the leadership of the PSD bench”.
André Ventura also indicated that Chega will maintain its request to hear the Minister of Finance and the Secretary of State for Tax Affairs in parliament.
When asked about former Prime Minister and PSD leader Pedro Passos Coelho’s interview with Observador radio, the president of Chega said that “the former Prime Minister is a person who has the right to give his opinion when he wants to and that’s what was missing if he didn’t and couldn’t”, and that “he’s even kept a low profile” recently.
André Ventura argued that Luís Montenegro “should listen more to Pedro Passos Coelho”, one of the “living forces of the PSD”, like “others”, which he did not do.
“We have to stop interpreting every word Pedro Passos Coelho says as an attack on AD or an approach to Chega. I think this culture we’re creating, whereby if someone thinks a little differently, they’re canceled or brutally attacked, is a culture that’s not very democratic.”
Ventura pointed to a “convergence of positions” on “a majority on the right”, which he considered natural, but maintained that “that time has passed”.
