Luis Montenegro accuses the PS of leaving “the entire member state” and “the entire party in the state”

This Wednesday, the PSD president accused the PS of leaving “all the parties of the state” and “the whole party in the government”, promising that with the AD health and education services would be improved, without party affiliation.

At the open-air rally of the Democratic Alliance (AD) in Évora, on a stage set up on Rua João de Deus, Luis Montenegro also said that the PS wants “the state to decide” people’s lives, while the PSD/CDS coalition PP/PPM wants to give them “the tools to enable every person to be who they want to be in life.”

According to the PSD president, “this is the structural difference” between the two projects: “The PS wants more state, it wants to use the state for itself, and in the end this always makes the situation much worse.” .

“Today the socialist welfare state is a disgrace, a disgrace to the left, a disgrace to socialist principles,” he says.

Luis Montenegro argued that in the face of “bad results” one should not insist on the “same prescription” and argued that through AD’s “different policies” health and education services would be improved, a “real welfare state”.

“We don’t want a broken state and we don’t want a welfare state that doesn’t give people the answers they want and deserve. We also do not want there to be a party in the state, even if it were ours. The state belongs “Citizens, the state exists to serve the citizens. We simply want government to give citizens the tools they need to create wealth and achieve what they want in life,” he said.

In Évora, which will become European Capital of Culture in 2027, Luis Montenegro highlighted proposals for the sector to “transform creativity into value”, arguing that “culture is not the legacy of the left” and that “the great transformations, the great cultural achievements of Portugal are even linked to ad”.

“In our program we propose that at the end of this legislature, spending on culture will be 50% higher than what the socialists left us. It’s not easy, but we will achieve this goal. That is why we propose that the school should value the teaching of the arts, theatre, music, plastic expression,” he said.

AD wants to create “a real patronage law that can provide creators, cultural producers, cultural agents with financial means to promote their activities,” understanding that even when it does not have financial profitability, culture has “social profitability, collective profitability.”

Taking it for granted that he would lead the next government, Luis Montenegro assured that he would be “next to Portuguese culture, Portuguese creativity.”

This was preceded by the speech of the President of the Lisbon City Council, Carlos Moedas, whom the PSD President called a “friend” and “fellow traveler” and whom he praised for his work as mayor.

Montenegro pointed to Moedas as “an expression that a government adhering to the principles of social democracy and Christian democracy is able to offer people a better quality of life.”

According to the PSD president, Lisbon now has “better transport”, “more life opportunities for young people” and “older people have more opportunities to lead an active life, they have more respect for public authorities and the public.”

In its speech, Montenegro responded to criticism of the over-optimism about the growth outlook on which the AD program is based, and accused the PS of lacking ambition: “Do you think that 3%, 3.5% growth is unattainable in Portugal?”

“What can he offer the country is to continue to remain in this stagnation, in this stagnation? So the PS is the first to admit and say to the Portuguese: don’t vote for us because we have no more ambitions than this, we have exhausted our expiration dates and we have exhausted the possibilities for change,” he said.

The PSD chairman expressed his conviction that the AD is “fighting for victory” in the Évora constituency, which elects three deputies. In 2022, the SDP elected a deputy here, whom it lost in 2019.