Former Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho warned the Government this Friday that “the end of the margins for maneuver” that allow “to postpone important decisions”, asking for changes without giving in to electoral calculations and “wasting time with distributional concerns”. In an intervention at the International Congress of Cooperatives, in Lisbon, Passos Coelho began by warning about the problems that arise from governments, in Portugal and Europe, currently, “attributing an urgency to the short term and too relative importance to the medium and long term”, for “fear of people’s reaction” who are not alerted to the difficulties in security, in complying with budgetary rules or in “investing enough on a scale to compete in the world”.
“I have always thought that it is preferable to face the negative consequences of the electoral judgment by doing something that seems indispensable to thinking about the future and I continue to think that this is what is worth it. Politics, contrary to what many people think, does not end with each election. Because in every election you can lose and you can win. But in reality there are only elections to lose and to win for those who look at the future in a non-passive way”, he added.
With Secretary of State Silvério Regalado in the audience, Passos praised the Government for managing to “remove the dramatism that it had had for so long” from the budget discussion in Portugal, considering that the State Budget is an instrument for the executive “to fulfill its external and internal obligations and should not be the stage for other discussions”.
After the praise, Passos Coelho left “warnings” for the Government, warning that “the end of the margins of maneuver that allow us to postpone important decisions” and “it is no longer worth having more electoral calculations” and “wasting time with distributional concerns”. “All social sectors would like to receive some attention from the State and some financial attention, but no one forgives in the future that Governments do not do what is necessary looking to the future. And that is the point. All the money that is distributed on a day-to-day basis is distributed, it is spent”, he added, reinforcing the warnings he had already left in the same sense, in a intervention in September.
Passos Coelho also stated that when you avoid “taking such important decisions at the right time” you are “condemned to make them out of time”always with “a worse result”. “Why? Because they are not as effective and always have to be more drastic than they would be if they had been taken at the right time. I believe that this is the time, therefore, to issue this warning. Both in European and national terms”, considered the former head of Government.
Passos said he believes that the country “can grow much more in the coming years, without just being at the expense of consumption” and said that “it is not enough” to distribute “a bonus to retirees, to one or another sector of Portuguese society” and “to do some budgetary skills to save the year”.
“It is a criticism that I accept here and that it is not just this Government. Unfortunately, we have lived with this type of policy for too many years. In Portugal and in other European countries”, he stated.
The former leader of the PSD also stated that the “State stopped investing many years ago” and “invests strictly in what corresponds to the resources provided to Portugal by the European Union”, and relies on consumption for its growth, which, he added, “for the year is worth nothing”.
Pedro Passos Coelho defended that the country will not grow without the reforms that it has needed “for too many years”, asking that these changes be moved forward “with the consensus that is possible to obtain”, considering that “the greater the consensus the better, the longer they last, the more deeply rooted they become, the more fruit they can bear”.
The former prime minister also criticized Europe’s “lack of care” in defense matters, considering that the European Union “was enchanted with its social model and little concerned about its security”, now facing a “race against time” because of Ukraine and finding itself forced to buy equipment from the Americans. “It is difficult, as we all know, it was not by chance that we arrived here, to reconcile social priorities with security priorities”, he considered.
At the entrance and exit of the event, Pedro Passos Coelho refused to answer journalists’ questions about national current affairs, such as the nationality law.
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