Prime Minister assured that disagreements with the President did not affect relations

The Prime Minister said this Sunday that disagreements over domestic politics “didn’t shake” relations with the President of the Republic, and even believes that there has not been such a “fluid” relationship in the last 50 years.

António Costa was speaking at a joint press conference with Marcelo Rebelo de Souza during the 28th Ibero-American Summit in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, which was nearing completion at the time.

When asked about relations with the head of state, the prime minister replied: “Even when we do not have the same points of view in domestic politics, personal relations are good, then in foreign policy issues, where positions absolutely coincide, relations can only be even better.”

Asked later if the president’s position on the government’s housing package had shaken the relationship between them, António Costa said: “I can only speak for myself: it didn’t shake things in any way.”

The Prime Minister then mentioned that Portugal had “a political system in which the President of the Republic is directly elected by the citizens, represents all Portuguese citizens and therefore has its own political function”, while “the government is the result of what are the results of elections to the Assembly of the Republic, it is politically accountable to the Assembly of the Republic and follows its government program.”

António Costa described “case-specific political differences” as something “absolutely normal”, “related to the functions of each”, and concluded that “therefore, there is nothing unusual about it”.

“Now we don’t have a presidential regime, where the President of the Republic leads, and we don’t have a parliamentary regime, where the President of the Republic has no political interference,” he stressed.

“We have a complex system, it’s true, but one that has worked well for many years, and, skip the indiscretion – I believe that the President of the Republic can subscribe to the same indiscretion – I believe that in these almost 50 years of democracy, not There should have been a time when relations between the Government and the President of the Republic were so fluid, so smooth, so normal, I would even say, with progressive friendship,” he added.

António Costa recalled that he had a “much older relationship” with the President of the Republic than the functions they now perform, and that they had known each other since he was a student of Marcelo Rebelo de Souza at the University’s Faculty of Law. Lisbon.

“In life we ​​had several moments of fun, there were also moments of confrontation, when the incumbent president of the republic was the leader of the opposition, and I was the minister for parliamentary affairs,” he said.

According to the Prime Minister, “these circumstances have never affected personal relationships.”