PS accuses Montenegro of arrogance, and the SDP that it advocates the impoverishment of the country

PS Deputy Secretary General Joao Torres this Sunday accused Luis Montenegro of the audacity of accusing the government of impoverishing the country and said that the PSD is the champion of impoverishment in Portugal.

“It takes great arrogance, like that shown by Luis Montenegro, to accuse the PS of being a party that is ruining our country,” said Joao Torres in Foz do Arelho, municipality of Caldas da Rainha, where he addressed with an appeal to the Portuguese “don’t be fooled by the maneuvers of the opposition and, in particular, the largest opposition party, the PDP-PSD”.

In his speech at the XVIII Congress of the CGTP-IN Movement of the Socialist Union, Joao Torres responded to the statements of Luis Montenegro, who accused the government of “every impoverishment” of the country, which he considered “deplorable and easily destroyed.” .

“In every year that the right has ruled our country in the 21st century, there has not been a year that Portugal has not become poorer than the European Union (EU),” he said, stressing that, on the contrary, “the years of Portugal’s convergence [com a UE] all of them have a mark: these are the years in which he ruled and in which he manages the PS.

“In terms of economic growth, the PS is indeed the champion of growth,” and “the SDP is the party on the podium of the country’s impoverishment,” he added.

Recalling measures such as the extraordinary renewal of the lowest pensions, free child care or the renewal of the lowest levels of family benefits, the Assistant Secretary General defended that “the PS is in fact a party that fights against social injustice.”

In an intervention marked by taunts against the SDP and its leader, João Torres accused Luis Montenegro of “great desire to whitewash the past, to sponge what the last government of the SDP,” led by Pedro Passos Coelho, had in mind.

João Torres said the PS “cannot accept this collective oblivion that some want to impose on the Portuguese” and did not spare the criticism of the leader of the largest opposition party, accusing him of wanting to “normalize the far right”. contrary to his party, with which “Enough will not pass, Enough will not pass,” he assured.

The Deputy Secretary General of the PS also accused the “new opposition leadership” of “an absolute addiction to demagogy and a lack of sense of statehood”, which he considers “absolutely deplorable” in the economic and social context affected by the war in Ukraine. .

The fact that there is a war “does not mean that there can be no disagreements, it does not mean that parties cannot criticize and even vote against the state budget for 2023”, but, he defended, “it should at least force some party leaders to think about the state of emergency we are facing, with all the economic and social consequences that this entails.”

In front of an audience associated with trade union movements, the Deputy General Secretary of the PS also distanced socialist politics from the politics of the Liberal Initiative in order to send a message that the PS will “carry out its progressive program of protecting the rights and strengthening the welfare state” in Portugal. . . .