Chega President Andre Ventura defended two opposing versions of the script this week after The dissolution of Parliament is possible in the event of failure to implement the State Budget for 2025.
“If the budget is not approved, it will be difficult [Luís Montenegro] “will remain in office unless he wants to achieve a status different from that of all the prime ministers of recent years,” or if he thinks “he is superhuman and can govern without a budget,” he began his statement on Tuesday.
“It is the Portuguese who will remove him from office whenever they want. The President of the Republic exists, but this parliament will have an important say in governance in the coming months,” Ventura warned.
Within 48 hours, Chegi’s leader had already decided that the “ideal scenario” was to “spare the country from new elections” because “nobody in Portugal wants” to be called to vote again, “including politicians.”
The prime minister “doesn’t have to resign, but he knows he can hardly govern the country in these circumstances,” he said after Montenegro assured he would not leave office if the opposition failed the budget.
Chegi’s leader soon abandoned negotiations on the viability of the next state budget, preferring a “central bloc government” between the SDP, SDS-PP and PS in order to establish himself (repeatedly) as the “leader of the opposition”.
And he continues to delegate any negotiations to the PS. “Chega does not want any more talk, it is for the socialists,” he stressed. According to Ventura, the government only says “that it wants to negotiate in order to look good in public opinion,” but “these are not negotiations, it does not want an approved budget, it says: ‘I want this, I can and I command it’.”
When discussing the state budget, Chega will insist on equalizing the mission of the security forces and will try to include measures that “the government has definitely taken” and that are in line with the party’s program.
IRS Jovem and the gradual reduction of IRC, two executive proposals that even Çega likes, will be excluded from the document and submitted to parliament as legislative powers.