IL accuses SDP of giving in to PS and going down the path of “to hell with the country” in state budget negotiations

This Friday, the president of the Liberal Initiative accused the PSD of having given in to the PS in the negotiations on the 2025 state budget and of taking the path of starting to “say: ‘To hell with the country'”.

“I remember there were times when people defended something like ‘to hell with the elections’. And now it seems to me that we are on a path where the PSD is starting to say ‘to hell with the country’, and that actually seems very worrying to us, not for us, but for the country,” said Rui Rocha during a visit to AgroSemana – Feira Agrícola do Norte in Póvoa de Varzim, Porto district.

The Liberal leader said the signals he had received from the SDP in recent months were to give in to the PS and that if that path was chosen, “there would be more of the same in the country.”

“We are not currently available for this type of positioning,” he assured.

And he insisted: “If we want to have a country like the one we had with António Costa, [ex-primeiro-ministro]”We do not have and we cannot make a budget that perpetuates some of the worst political vices by buying clientele without delivering restructuring and reform.”

IL is concerned that if it is true that the SDP will end up negotiating the state budget with the PS, then what the fundamental goals of the country are will ultimately not be reflected, he explained.

“We know very well that the PS wants to create a country in which there is a distribution of wealth that cannot be created, and therefore we must create wealth,” he stressed.

Stating that there is no exchange of correspondence with the IL, unlike what happens between the PSD and the PS, Rui Rocha recalled that the Liberals’ position is “very clear”, so he is “extremely calm”.

“What we want and demand from the country is structural change in the Portuguese economy and society. We want the country to change not because change is good in itself, but because the country really needs change,” he stressed.

The IL president also said that the man who is “perhaps too calm” for a country that needs change is Prime Minister Luis Montenegro.

“We already had stagnation, we wanted to see energy, motivation, the ability to innovate, courage, but we saw much less than we wanted,” he said.

Portugal needs to achieve economic growth, provide professional prospects for young people, ensure that healthcare works and, above all, the state, he defended.

For example, Rui Rocha suggested that the storming of the General Secretariat of the Ministry of the Interior building early on Wednesday morning was “an example of something not working.”

“This makes us think that the state does not function in many areas that are nuclear. Sometimes it interferes in many things that do not concern it so much and do not ensure its basic functioning,” he concluded.