The PSD’s parliamentary leader assured today that the Prime Minister “did not lie” and was “clear and crystalline” on the issue of tax relief, and reiterated that the government will “lower taxes now” for the Portuguese.
Hugo Soares was speaking to journalists in Braga to respond to criticism from the opposition, including from the secretary-general of the PS, who accused the government of deceiving the Portuguese with the “hoax and fraud” represented by the tax relief, when in fact it was only around 200 million euros.
According to Hugo Soares, it must be “very clear” that the government and the prime minister, Luís Montenegro, did not lie or try to deceive the Portuguese.
The PSD parliamentary leader stressed that Luís Montenegro “was crystal clear in his intervention in the debate on the government program”, considering that the issue was also “clear” in the electoral campaign and in the debates that preceded the legislative elections.
Hugo Soares also left a message for the opposition, saying that it must “prepare itself better, study what is being said and not follow in the footsteps of those who have made mistakes, blaming others and practicing bad faith politics”.
“The opposition has to get used to the fact that politicians are not all the same,” said Hugo Soares, pointing out that “there are those who are crystal clear” in what they say to the Portuguese.
Earlier, speaking to the Lusa news agency, Pedro Nuno Santos criticized the fact that the Finance Minister had clarified that the 1.5 billion euros in personal income tax cuts that had been announced by the Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, actually represented around 200 million euros, since they will not be added to the more than 1.3 billion euros in tax relief included in the State Budget for 2024 and already in force.
“We are facing a hoax, a fraud, a government deceiving the Portuguese. We’ve been warning for months that the measures, that AD’s candidacy was not credible and this is the first proof, the first moment when that is clear,” accused the PS leader.
According to Pedro Nuno Santos, “the fiscal shock promised by the PSD didn’t even last a day” since “of the 1.5 billion euros in tax savings announced by Luís Montenegro, 1.3 billion are the responsibility of the Socialist Party government”.
“It’s serious, it’s a disgrace and it’s unacceptable that this happened at the time of the presentation of the government program and we expect more explanations now from the prime minister,” he said.
