Alexandra Leitan, parliamentary leader of the PS, said this Saturday that the party will submit a request for an urgent debate, to be held next Wednesday, on the issue of the IRS rate cuts announced by Luis Montenegro on Friday.
“Those who talk about loyalty and trust believe that this government is completely untrustworthy,” he said.
“SDP and AD promised what was already in the state budget of the PS. This is so serious that the PS will demand an urgent debate next Wednesday,” he concluded.
The leader of the PS parliament also accused Luis Montenegro of deceiving the country and said that this is “a government that is starting very badly, undermining trust.”
Asked about statements made by PSD parliamentary leader Hugo Soares, who accused the PS of acting in bad faith on this issue, Alexandra Leitan found the reaction “quite funny.”
“When we are witnessing a situation where the entire country has been deceived, intentionally or not, by the government and the PSD by turning the situation around in this way, I don’t think it deserves more comment,” he stressed.
The leader of the PS parliament also considered that reducing this situation “to a communication problem is probably the biggest euphemism of recent times,” emphasizing that “it is obvious that this is not a communication problem.”
“Clearly the government was trying to convince the Portuguese that they were going to double the IRS cuts. This is exactly what happened. Whether they did it intentionally or not, I think it doesn’t really matter because we need to have a government that the Portuguese people trust and can trust,” he said.
Leitão denied that the executive was ambiguous, stressing that “they wanted to benefit from a mistake they made” and noting that the government only came to “deny it through the Minister of Finance when he was directly asked about it.”
Asked whether the PS would admit that it approves of such a cut to the IRS, given that it would only be around 200 million, the parliamentary leader stressed that it was “clearly too early” for the party to take a position, since the proposal was not yet known and that the government “brings surprises every hour.”
“We are now focused on getting all the clarifications from the government, for the sake of trust and credibility. A government that is just beginning to exercise its powers is actually starting out very, very badly, already breaking any relationship of trust with the country,” he argued.
In an interview with RTP this Friday, the Minister of Finance clarified that the 1.500 million euros of IRS aid mentioned by the Prime Minister this Thursday, at the beginning of the debate on the government program, will not be added to the approximately 1.300 million euros. euros of the IRS reduction recorded in the OE for 2024, that is, about 200 million.
Author: Andrea Churra Pereira This Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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