The coordinator of the Bloc de Esquerda, Mariana Mortagua, said this Thursday that “the day when the parties stop offering their alternatives in the name of any kind of stability, democracy will end.”
Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of a meeting with the Bar Association, Mariana Mortágua said that the Esquerda Bloc feels a “democratic obligation to participate and contribute to the budget debate” and that the recent statements by the President of the Republic do not increase the pressure on the Bloc members.
Mortagua said that, in addition to its responsibility to participate in the budget process, BE takes on the “responsibility of presenting an alternative,” arguing that “the worst thing that can happen to democracy is if parties refuse to present political alternatives.”
“The bloc wants to present a political alternative to the path that the government has chosen, an alternative to the neoliberal program that the government has chosen, and we do not renounce this democratic responsibility, and we believe that this is important for the country, because democracy loses its strength when suddenly they all become versions of the same project, with the same budget,” he said.
Asked whether this message was addressed to the Secretary General of the Socialist Party, Pedro Nuno Santos, the Bloc’s coordinator explained that “the decision of each party regarding each budget belongs only to each party” and reiterated that “democracy loses quality and is reduced when alternatives are suppressed by pressure in the name of fictitious stability.”
“In the countries where this steamroller of governance has swallowed up all the parties, the strongest far right is left. We have France as a good example of what happened with the ‘macronisation’ of politics. Let’s not let that happen in Portugal and present strong alternatives. What the other parties are doing, I cannot comment on,” he concluded.
On July 16, BE coordinator Mariana Mortágua announced that her party would vote against the 2025 state budget proposal and accused the PS of contradiction if it approved the PSD/CDS-PP government document.
“This is a budget that turns the country upside down. This is a budget of inequality. This is a budget that takes resources from below and delivers them to the top without solving any of the country’s problems. And that is why the Left Bloc will vote against this budget,” Mariana Mortágua said at a press conference at the party’s headquarters in Lisbon.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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