Speaking to journalists at the municipal market in Guimarães during a campaign event for Sunday’s municipal elections, Mariana Leitão stated that “it is normal for the government to negotiate as it sees fit” and that “this budget, being largely unchanged, means the Socialist Party is unlikely to have major issues with the document.”
“For us, it was obvious that it should be a much more ambitious document, one that truly puts the Portuguese people first, not the state,” remarked Mariana Leitão, reiterating criticisms of the document, particularly concerning housing and tax burden.
For the liberal leader, the persistence of a tax burden detrimental to the middle class is “something that has been quite common” under socialist governance.
“This budget does not bring the ambition we would like, nor does it solve people’s problems in these key areas,” she stated.
Leitão argued that it is a document “not ambitious for the Portuguese, not ambitious for Portugal,” and described it as “a greedy budget because public spending continues to rise markedly.”
On Thursday night in Braga, where Mariana Leitão was also present, PS Secretary-General José Luís Carneiro assured that he would “contribute to political stability” in the budget debate, although he identified “a very strong inequality in the distribution of sacrifices asked of the Portuguese people.”
“We will keep our word, the one requested by citizens in the elections three months ago. We will contribute to our country’s political stability because that is what people want, for us to be able to contribute to political stability,” he emphasized.
