“It’s an amendment to the Budgetary Framework Law that, prior to the General State Account or budget presentation, requires the Government to report not only on last year’s budget execution but also the estimated values of waste, deviation, and fraud in each ministry,” announced the leader of Chega.
Speaking to journalists at the Assembly of the Republic, the leader of Chega stated that the objective of the proposed law amendment, to be presented at the start of the legislative session, is to determine how much money is spent “either on extraordinary expenses, or on unfounded waste or deviation, or on project overruns, regardless of their nature, in each ministry.”
Referring to the future composition of the Government, Chega’s president reiterated that the current Health Minister, Ana Paula Martins, lacks “the significant political conditions to continue” in the upcoming administration.
André Ventura estimated that in the health sector alone, there is “between two billion to three billion in waste every year.”
Ventura was questioned about the case of a dermatologist who allegedly received 51,000 euros in just one day of work at Santa Maria Hospital in Lisbon, contending that it is an “irregular and certainly illegal” situation.
On Friday, it was reported that a dermatologist at Santa Maria Hospital allegedly earned 400,000 euros over 10 Saturdays of additional work in 2024, with one of the days used to remove benign lesions from his parents.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation into this case, and the General Inspection of Health Activities (IGAS) also initiated an investigation into the additional surgical activities carried out within the NHS, as well as an audit related to additional surgical work and the classification of patients in homogeneous diagnostic groups (GDH) at the Dermatology Service of the Local Unit of Santa Maria, from 2021 to the present.
Today, the Chega leader was also questioned about the stance of the credit rating agency Fitch, which warned about the pressures André Ventura’s party may place on public expenditure.
“I find it extraordinary for an agency to note as a risk to public debt the growth of Chega, when for years we had statist parties supporting the Government, as was the case during the ‘geringonça’, parties advocating for the nationalization of most of the economy, and they never issued warnings about the danger to the economy, and now, a party that is even liberal, and that even supports the market, and that even wants more economy and more investment, they say is a risk to Portuguese public debt,” he criticized.
André Ventura asserted that “these agencies are part of the same biased system” that he believes exists “in Europe and the world.”
Pointing out that this agency had previously issued warnings about Donald Trump or Javier Milei, who became the Presidents of the United States and Argentina, respectively, Ventura suggested that this could be “a sign” that he might “win the next legislative elections” in Portugal.
