Next Friday, the government will be a caretaker government. It will be limited to “carrying out acts that are strictly necessary to ensure the management of public affairs”.
The government has until next Thursday to show what it’s worth in approving important legislation, before being limited by the constraints of day-to-day management.
The warning came from the President of the Republic. Next Thursday evening, after the Council of Ministers has met, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa will issue the decree exonerating the Prime Minister – something that will mean the fall of the entire government.
The exoneration decree means that the government will now be in day-to-day management – the so-called “caretaker government”. And this means, according to Article 186 of the Constitution, that “the Government shall limit itself to carrying out acts that are strictly necessary to ensure the management of public affairs”. Constitutional jurisprudence says that these are “unavoidable” acts. In any case, the concept was purposely placed in the Constitution in an undefined formulation, to allow governments flexibility in its execution. Legal experts are divided on multiple interpretations and the Constitutional Court has already produced more than one ruling on the subject. Diogo Freitas do Amaral (1941-2019) has a book on the subject, entitled “Governos de gestão”.
“In principle, the last Council of Ministers will be on the 7th and therefore, on the 7th of December, the resignation will take place,” the President said on Saturday, on the sidelines of a visit to the Food Bank against Hunger in Lisbon. Moments later, in another statement, he indicated that the resignation decree would take effect “on Friday, December 8th”.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said that “the initial idea” was to sign the government’s resignation decree last “Monday or Tuesday”, but as “there were some important votes for the PRR” that “needed to be finished”, he left the formalization of the resignation until next week “with the PRR in mind”. “That’s also why the dissolution in the Assembly, which is on the 15th [of January], was also designed to allow the final drafting of the Budget to finish, which is towards the end of the year,” he added, noting that he also wanted to give Parliament “time to review” the statutes of the professional associations, should he decide to veto them. The President of the Republic explained that one of the conditions for Portugal to receive the next PRR funds “was for the statutes to be delivered and approved”.
