Ansião, Portugal, Sept. 28, 2025 (Lusa) - The leader of the far-right Chega party, André Ventura, accused the prime minister on Sunday of being "out of touch with reality" and called it "pure electioneering" for Luís Montenegro to announce increases for the elderly and pensioners on the eve of local elections.
"For a prime minister, who has been in office since March last year, to come on the doorstep of an election to do either inaugurations, as we have seen, or to go to his mayors to do inaugurations, paid for with taxpayers' money, or to make promises, or to deliver budgets two days before the elections, is pure electioneering that nobody believes in," he accused, emphasising that "the Portuguese are not stupid".
André Ventura was speaking to journalists before a pre-campaign event for the local elections on 12 October in Ansião, Leiria district, and commented on the Prime Minister's announcement on Saturday of a new increase in the Solidarity Supplement for the Elderly (CSI) in the next State Budget. A supplement for lower pensions, if there is time off.
The president of Chega also accused Luís Montenegro of being “out of touch with reality” when talking about a moderate income of €2,300 and considered that everyone was “very uncomfortable” with the prime minister's statements.
"He is a prime minister who is increasingly out of touch with the reality of young people, house rents, immigration, and the country in general," he criticised.
Ventura considered that the government "is zigzagging, without knowing the real country and without knowing what people need", and countered that, in this campaign, Chega "wants to know the real country".
"The government doesn't know what it wants, but when it comes to the elections, it always tries to show that it's doing something. People are growing tired of that. That's why Montenegro is getting tired of it too, because everything he promises doesn't happen," he criticised.
André Ventura also said that, "whether it's the elderly supplement, the tolls or immigration and security controls, the truth is that when we get here, if it weren't for Chega, there would be nothing to say, because it was Chega who managed to do all this".
The Chega leader considered the government to be merely making promises and claimed authorship of the proposal to increase the deduction for housing costs.
"The government said it couldn't be done from a budgetary point of view; it was a very demanding measure. They accepted our reduction in personal income tax, but not the housing deduction. Now the government has announced exactly what Chega had proposed, now that we're on the verge of elections," he said.
In what was the only action of the day by Chega's leader, André Ventura was also asked about a report in the Público newspaper about an insinuation by the Prime Minister's office regarding the alleged existence of political motivations on the part of the authorities investigating the Spinumviva case, which Luís Montenegro denied.
The Chega leader considered that Luís Montenegro "can hardly associate Spinumviva with elections, because Spinumviva emerged at a time when the whole country thought there wouldn't be elections so soon" and maintained that it wasn't this process "that provoked elections, it was the lack of clarification from the Prime Minister".
Chega is running business manager Edgar Ramalho for mayor of Ansião, which the PS leads.
The municipality of Ansião is led by the PS, which won four out of seven mandates in the 2021 local elections. The PSD won the rest.
The Socialists are re-electing the current mayor, António José Domingues, for a third term, while the PSD's frontrunner is Jorge Cancelinha.
FM/ADB // ADB.LG
Lusa/Fim
