PCP argues that the PS program will only be achievable if changes are made to the budget.

This Monday, the general secretary of the PKP said that the implementation of the measures included in the PS election program will require amendments to the budget, insisting on strengthening the CDU in order to put pressure on the Socialists to “observe some positive aspects.”

Paulo Raimundo was speaking to reporters at the party’s headquarters in Lisbon after a meeting with UNICEF Portugal when he was asked about the PS’s electoral program for the legislative elections in early March, starting with pointing out an “apparent contradiction.”

“If measures are to remain vague ideas, general ideas, a list of intentions, then the current state budget is suitable for this. If they are to be implemented through specific measures, then it must be clearly stated that a budget adjustment is necessary. Because these two things are incompatible,” he says.

The communist leader, accompanied by a delegation that included parliamentary leader Paula Santos, insisted that “the experience of recent years” shows that giving more strength to the CDU (the coalition of the PCP and the environmentalist party “Os Verdes”) “will make the PS realize some positive things, who will ultimately move forward now” in this program.

Paulo Raimundo stressed that the PKP is clear about “what it is going to do,” defending the need to amend the budget to match many of the measures proposed by the communists, such as ending tax breaks or increasing wages and pensions. .

“I did not want to raise expectations about the election program that belongs to the PS and which, as I say: it is a set of promises that even those that could be positive, from what I saw, in fact, everything was very vague, but even they either the CDU and PKP will have more strength, or they will remain vacant, or will not be implemented,” he emphasized.

Raimundo recalled that Prime Minister António Costa “promised to stop charging tolls on the Via do Infante in the Algarve”, and noted that recently the current Socialist leader Pedro Nuno Santos said “in a warm intervention” that he would abolish tolls travel in the interior of the country. from the country.

“Let’s look at two years of absolute majority with everything in hand. And let us ask ourselves why this or that measure, which is now being put forward with great pride, has not been implemented. How difficult was it to end tariffs on former scutes? What was the practical impossibility of this? No, it was an option not to stop collecting, and therefore the one who now promises this, excuse the expression, will have to take it with him in order to fulfill this promise,” he said.

The Communist secretary general was also asked about an increase in the annual inflation rate to 2.3% in January, up 0.9 percentage points from December, driven by electricity prices and the end of zero VAT, according to the National Statistics Institute (INE). about the need to increase wages and fix prices.

“Just as the government found a food basket to which it applied a zero VAT measure, price fixing was then applied based on that food basket. This had a number of advantages: fixing and lowering prices, which no longer contributed to increased inflation,” he said.

Regarding children’s rights, after a meeting with UNICEF representatives in Portugal, Paulo Raimundo said that “you cannot look at means or resources.”

The communist leader used the slogan of UNICEF in Portugal, saying that there were “one million 800 thousand reasons” (the total number of children living in the country) to “act and have hope.”

In terms of specific measures, Paulo Raimundo advocated strengthening the rights of children, but also of parents, especially with regard to raising wages, ending the “total deregulation of working hours” or combating precarity, and improving access to public services such as nurseries or the National Health Service.