The vice-president of the PSD, Paulo Rangel, said today that the confidence and hope of the Portuguese in the future and in the institutions “can only be restored with an alternative” and by removing “the socialists from power”.
“We can have hope and confidence if there is a change on March 10 [2024]. The confidence that can be restored by the Portuguese in the institutions results directly, obviously, from the possibility of changing socialist governance. These eight years have brought us to a standstill,” said Paulo Rangel, at the PSD headquarters in Porto.
He added: “I think confidence and hope can only be restored if we remove the Socialists from power.”
In a reaction to the Prime Minister’s ninth and final Christmas message, Paulo Rangel said that, like António Costa, the PSD also trusts the Portuguese, but that the Portuguese’s confidence in the future “can only be restored with an alternative”.
“With an absolute majority, over the course of a year they have squandered the credibility of the government and the institutions,” said Paulo Rangel, criticizing the Prime Minister’s assessment of government activity, about a month and a half after he resigned as head of government because of a judicial investigation and when early parliamentary elections are scheduled for March 10.
“How is it possible to praise the progress that has been made in qualifications when we see the situation that the education system is in, the situation in which our students are without teachers, in which teachers are without any incentive, the situation, therefore, of impasse that education has entered,” he said.
As well as education, the PSD vice-president also criticized the right accounts, considering that “they were made on the basis of the destruction, abandonment and systematic withdrawal of public services”.
For Paulo Rangel, the Prime Minister’s Christmas message lacked “a word” for health professionals, but also for the homeless and those facing the housing crisis.
“We know that poverty and the risk of poverty have increased especially in the last year and a half, when the Socialist government had an absolute majority and was led by António Costa,” he said.
Arguing that the party didn’t intend to make “a complete criticism” of António Costa’s socialist policy, the PSD vice-president said, however, that the prime minister “didn’t hesitate to make some propaganda”.
The Prime Minister, António Costa, said today that he is leaving a better country after eight years of leadership by Socialist governments and considered that Portugal is prepared to face the challenges of a more qualified population and less debt.
“In these eight years in which I have had the opportunity to get to know the Portuguese and Portugal even better, I have only strengthened my confidence in our homeland. It is with this reinforced confidence in each one of you, in our collective capacity, in Portugal, that I say goodbye, wishing you a merry Christmas, an excellent 2024 and the certainty that the Portuguese will continue to make each new year an even better one,” said the leader of the executive.
