BE accuses PSD/CDS of “criminalizing poverty” and PSD abandons the “struggle between good and evil.”

The BE in the Lisbon Municipal Assembly accused the PSD/CDS-PP leadership in the chamber on Tuesday of “criminalizing poverty,” praising PSD MP Carlos Reis for abandoning “a kind of struggle between good and evil.”

“In my scale of values, the difference between good and bad is a negative difference, and I do not allow anyone in this house to call me “bad” in an attempt to criminalize poverty. it’s in the name of the PSD,” said Social Democrat Carlos Reis, visibly emotional.

After speaking at the pulpit, the SDP deputy sat down, but continued to ask questions to the BU deputies, creating noise in the hall.

“Deputies, either you stop or the session will be adjourned. Do you understand? Either you remain silent and calm down, or I will adjourn the session. What is happening here is a disgrace. I appreciate the silence in the hall,” said the President of the Municipal Assembly of Lisbon, Rosario Farm (PS), raised its voice to be heard.

The rise of PSD MP Carlos Reis comes after a speech by BE MP Joana Teixeira, who criticized the interference of the PSD/SDS leadership in the response to homelessness in Lisbon.

“The significant increase in response and municipal financial efforts to address the needs of the homeless was not made in 2024 with PSD/CDS, but in 2020, when the Block was able to quadruple its response investment in one year. in this area, increasing the annual financial efforts of the Lisbon City Council to more than six million euros,” said the blocker.

Pointing out that under the PSD/CDS administration, the city has witnessed an increase in the number of homeless people, the BE MP said that the BE had managed to increase the number of homeless beds to 1,040 in the previous term (2017-2021), with a rising trend to 4,500 by 2021. 2030 when PSD/CDS announces 2000 vacancies.

The BE MP also mentioned a “mega-operation with a strong police apparatus” carried out near Igreja dos Anjos in Arroyos, where “more than a hundred people” are sleeping in tents, stressing that “no one wants to live on the street” and lamenting the lack of answers .

“Sweeping operations that gradually drive people from one square to another, trying to hide them little by little so that they no longer bother their conscience, or empty marketing, even if empty, on the part of those who in some video proclaim the interculturality of the city on social networks so that at the same time, to try to reduce the understanding of this interculturality to those who have money, this is the criminalization of poverty, this is a safe vision of migration and this is at the same time incompetence,” the MP accused BE.

In response, PSD deputy Carlos Reis acknowledged the difference of opinion and the existence of differences in concepts, according to which “some want ‘open boards’ without borders and for Portugal to be a refuge open to the whole world”, but emphasized that the Chamber’s Intervention follows from the previous mandate, with a team inherited from the days of the BE advisor.

The Social Democrat highlighted the approval of the new municipal plan, which calls for “large investments in supporting homelessness until 2030, almost 70 million, which the city of Lisbon will spend.”

Responding to the speech, the BE MP said that “political differences are natural, but intimidation will never be an acceptable way of doing politics”, finding the Social Democrat’s tone “totally reprehensible”.

Council Member for Human and Social Rights Sophia Atayde (CDS-PP) assured that there are “quality answers that think about the purpose of these people in life” to integrate them into society and the labor market, noting that the problem does not solve the problem. distribute tents.

At the start of the meeting, activist Mariana Carneiro from the organization Solidariedade Imigrate noted that the process in Igreja dos Anjos is “poorly managed” and stressed that homeless people living in tents see their rights “constantly violated.” with “several attempts at expulsion”, asking not to allow what happened in the past when “they tried to literally destroy these people, as if humanity did not exist.”