During the closing remarks of the Government program debate in parliament, Inês Sousa Real ran out of time to state the PAN’s voting stance on the PCP’s motion of rejection but later confirmed to Lusa that she will abstain.
“For PAN, this program is a bad Government program,” the deputy noted, criticizing a range of areas including the environment, environmental protection, housing, health, education, and immigration.
Regarding the environment, PAN criticizes the “increase of public support to major polluters” and what it sees as the Government’s insistence on “a recipe of legislative simplifications that are nothing more than a blank check for soil impermeabilization.”
On animal protection, the sole deputy stated that the PSD/CDS-PP Government makes “contradictory” promises and has a program “so vague and lacking that it allows for more resources to be allocated to the law against killing,” while in housing, she pointed out “blatant delays,” citing Porta 65 as an example.
In the health sector, she warned about the growing number of patients without a family doctor, and in education, criticized the “readiness to uncover an agenda aiming to increase tuition fees and drive students into debt,” calling it “unacceptable.”
Inês Sousa Real also criticized the decision to “subordinate culture in a ministry that seems a mishmash of themes,” referring to the fact that this portfolio is now part of a joint ministry with Youth and Sports, as well as the prime minister’s decision to “reduce female presence in the Government” at a time when “women’s rights are under unprecedented attack” and domestic violence “has already killed seven people in the first three months of the year.”
“In a context where violence is happening at home and hate crimes are at our doorstep, the Government insists on portraying immigration as the source of all evil, following the agenda of the far right,” she added, vowing that PAN will provide “constructive” opposition to the executive.
