In Portugal a new political chapter opens.
Disagreements on the left for the approval of budgets for next year have broken the old idyll among the allies of the ‘Geringonça’: socialists, communists and block of the left.
“I have a quiet conscience, I did everything, everything in my hand,” said Prime Minister Antonio Costa in the intervention that has closed the debate.
A few words that advanced what was going to happen minutes later.
With 117 votes against (those who add the PSD and other minority parties on the right), 108 votes in favor (those of the socialist deputies) and five abstentions (the three of the animalist party and two others, of deputies not attached to any
Training), Costa has not achieved sufficient support to approve your public accounts and now the ball is on the roof of President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, on whose hands he rests the task of dissolving Parliament and convening early elections as soon as possible, predictably, in
January.
“My position is very simple: budget or dissolution,” Rebello de Sousa warned this week.
They tell the bad tongues that the ‘Geringonça’ did not invent the Portuguese.
In the century of gold, Quevedo already qualified the verses of Góngora, the eternal rival of him, of ‘syringeza’, for incomprehensible.
These two great writers, who shared so much, never managed to understand each other.
In Portugal, in the 21st century, the parties on the left, similar to their proposals, also seem condemned to face.
Catarina Martins, from the left block, summed up this afternoon, on the heated debate in the Assembly, the Hartazgo of the parties on the left.
“Gerinconça has died by obsession with the absolute majority of the PS.”
“It is an error that Portugal goes to elections and it is difficult to understand this break,” said José Reis, professor of economics at the University of Coimbra, for whom it is obvious that, while the Communist Party and the Left Block will be harmed, it will not be harmed, it will not be The case of the Socialist Party. “Historically, not so much for its program and its historical performance, especially during the Portuguese Revolution against Salazar, the Communist Party knew how to choose the side of democracy, but at present it has a tendency to fraction and lose votes,” he recognizes, something that It also happens to the block of the left, as the last 2019 elections, as well as the municipalities of last September. For Reis, the freshly released crisis in Portugal “is the responsibility of the entire left”, and it is a pity, because the agreement reached by the three formations in 2015 – which expelled the conservative Passos Coelho- “closed the austerity page and demonstrated that an economic government was possible to put the State on a central role “, something that, then, in the middle of Coronavirus pandemic,” has been essential “.
In what position does this leave for Antonio Costa? Qualified by the Portuguese press as “survivor”, “proud” and “political animal”, analysts doubt that he will retire to a background. “The duty of the government, my duty, is not turning on a moment of difficulty, is to face the difficulties and that is why I do not give up,” the coast itself declared in the parliamentary debate yesterday. The reading of him is that the crisis is not his fault, but of everyone else. “I will lead my game if there are elections,” he insisted yesterday coast. Let’s not forget that, back in 2015, he passed, in a matter of days, of a loser in the urns of prime minister, thanks to the negotiating skills of him. Affiliated to the Socialist Party with only 14 years, Costa has been mayor of Lisbon, deputy at the Assembly, MEP, Minister and Prime Minister. It is difficult for him to go on the towel. “He is a man with a great political intuition and there is no one leader in the socialist party or on the left of the next election,” says Reis.
But while the left wobbles and its budgets crash -son, in addition, the most social of recent times, with measures such as the rise of 40 euros for the minimum wage, from 10 euros for pensions or start-up of day care centers
FREE- The right looks for your opportunity to go back to govern.
And, in the Social Democratic Party (PSD), aid for the recent municipal triumph in Lisbon, a name sounds, that of Paulo Rangel, willing to take away the leading Rui Rio, a veteran who his own party accuses of being complacent
With Costa.
Symptomatic of this probable generational relief at the front of the PSD is that President Reblo de Sousa, in full political storm, received, yesterday, alone, to angel, for the moment a simple candidate for the opposition leader.
Tonight, in Portugal – where, from the Revolution of the Claveles, only five of the 21 governments have managed to complete a mandate without interruption – Rebelo of Sousa receives Antonio Costa and Ferro Rodrigues, president of the Assembly, to continue writing the new
Stage that opens in the country.
The next important date is November 3, when an extraordinary meeting of the State Council will take place.
Only after listening to this body, the president will formally announce the call for elections.
