The secretary-general of the PS said today that he will analyze the Stability Program (SP) in detail, as well as other government proposals, claiming that now all care is taken with the Prime Minister’s word.
Pedro Nuno Santos was speaking to journalists after attending the presentation of Manuel Alegre’s book, “Memórias minhas”, at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon – a session attended by the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and former Prime Minister António Costa – after being asked about the PS’s position on the Stability Program delivered by the government to parliament today.
In his response, the Socialist leader referred above all to the controversy surrounding the announcement of the IRS tax cut made by the Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, on Thursday, during the first day of the debate on the Government Program. An announcement that was first thought to represent a tax cut of around 1.5 billion euros, but which, a day later, on Friday, the Minister of Finance, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, estimated at around 200 million euros.
Regarding the Stability Program, according to Pedro Nuno Santo, the PS “still needs time to analyze it”.
“And the last few days have shown that we have to be very careful with what the government presents, because we could be surprised later on. That’s why we’re going to analyze this Stability Program very carefully,” he said.
The PS secretary-general stressed that “these last few days have been a time of great concern about what awaits the Portuguese”, “with a government that surprised everyone by presenting as a major measure what we now know was not its own”.
“Faced with the shock of so many Portuguese people, from different parties, from journalists, we had the worst reaction of all from the government: it blamed those who had been deceived, as if they had to have been able to anticipate that what they were being told wasn’t quite true. This is absolutely unacceptable and worrying in this day and age, because we have to trust democracy, we have to trust elected politicians, we have to trust a government and a prime minister,” he said.
Faced with Luís Montenegro’s proposal to reduce the personal income tax, supposedly by 1.5 billion euros, according to Pedro Nuno Santos, “the PS took the Prime Minister at his word”.
The PS “was not mistaken, it was not inattentive, it trusted. Unfortunately, it turned out the other way around and we have to be very careful now with every announcement the government makes, with every document the government presents,” he explained.
With regard to the 2024-2028 Stability Program, the PS secretary-general, in an initial reaction, said that it “doesn’t even reflect the government’s program”.
“So, for what it’s worth, it doesn’t translate, it doesn’t reflect what the government presented during the campaign,” he repeated.
Asked how the PS would vote on a government proposal to reduce personal income tax by around 200 million euros, Pedro Nuno Santos claimed not to know.
“On Thursday, we thought it was a tax cut of 1.5 billion euros, but we’ve learned that around 90% of that cut has already been included in the budget for which the PS government is responsible. So we’re going to be cautious, wait for the proposal to be presented to us and we’ll evaluate it, with the certainty that we’ll always demand respect for the truth and for what the Portuguese are being told. This is fundamental for trust in the institutions, but unfortunately this government is off to the worst possible start,” he added.
