Lisbon, Nov. 29, 2024 (Lusa) - The Socialist Party's parliamentary leader said on Friday that with the approval of the "bad budget from a bad government", there were no more "excuses, diversionary manoeuvres and victimisation", holding the PSD/CDS-PP government responsible for the choices made.
"Despite this being a bad budget from a bad government, the PS favoured stability and did so with a sense of state and responsibility, honouring its commitment to the Portuguese," said Alexandra Leitão at the closing debate on the 2025 budget.
With the approval of the budget, which will be possible thanks to the abstention of the PS, "the dramatisation to which the government has turned this whole process is over", said Alexandra Leitão.
"No more excuses, no more diversionary manoeuvres and no more victimisation. It's the government's budget. The choices are the government's. It's the government's responsibility," she said.
She said the PS "will continue to scrutinise the government's actions" and present proposals to solve people's problems.
"To be the alternative that the Portuguese can trust: constructive and responsible, but also rigorous, attentive, firm and assertive," she pledged.
For Alexandra Leitão, it's a budget that leaves the Socialists "between the doubt of incompetence and the certainty of opacity".
Examples include the divergence in the figures for economic growth and employment, the initial budget for the health service "with an error of several hundred million euros", the funds for sport or the amount for updating pensions "based on a poorly calculated formula".
'And when the education minister presents wrong figures claiming to meet targets that he hasn't met, is that incompetence or opacity? The education minister has already assumed this error, or rather, it has been pushed onto the services as members of this government always do," he criticised.
Reiterating that this "is not and never will be the PS budget", the PS parliamentary leader said that the Socialists had tried to "approve a very restricted set of proposals".
"Right at the start of this process, we rid the country of an unfair, ineffective, disproportionate and probably unconstitutional IRS Jovem (Youth income tax)", she recalled.
Alexandra Leitão also emphasised the PS's victory with the approval of "a structural and permanent increase of 1.25 percentage points for pensions up to €1,500".
"Thanks to the PS, pensioners will be able to count on a fair and stable extraordinary increase, instead of an uncertain and one-off bonus, managed according to the electoral calendar," she emphasised, considering that “it's a fair and responsible proposal, whose sustainability has already been validated by the UTAO”.
The PS parliamentary leader also took the opportunity to criticise Prime Minister Luís Montenegro's statement on security, an "unusual intervention of a security nature" that turned "an announcement on public security into a personal propaganda manoeuvre".
"After the riots, a serious and considered reflection was needed. The budget needed proximity responses for the communities living on the great urban peripheries. Nothing!" she said.
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