The president of the Liberal Initiative, Rui Rocha, today criticized the government’s “excessive tax withholding” where “the Portuguese have more and more empty shopping bags.”
Rui Rocha spoke to reporters at the end of a tour of the Mercado de Santiago stalls in Aveiro, where he learned about the “sense of crisis” of sellers and buyers, in another “liberal route” dedicated to increasing the cost of living.
“We came here today to the market in Aveiro to understand with people how they feel the consequences of the crisis, and we found that people say they take less food, that is, the bag of the Portuguese is becoming more and more empty,” he said.
Rui Rocha said it was “alarming when news broke a few hours ago that the tax burden had reached an all-time high of 36.4% of gross domestic product (GDP).
“We systematically see how the António Costa government is charging more and more, withholding more and more wages and incomes from the Portuguese, and the situation of the Portuguese is getting worse and worse,” he criticized, recalling that the Liberal Initiative proposed to reduce taxes for five lower levels of personal income tax (IRS).
“We do not agree that there is this excessive withholding of taxes from the people, while there is this difficulty, which is very evident in the conversations we had during this visit,” he insisted.
TAP also approached the conversation, where the sequence of episodes of “political interference suggests the new CEO is conditioned”, that this is “a case that people are following very closely and very frustrating for them”.
Rui Rocha says he believes “due to the lack of hope and confidence in the current political solution” the Liberal Initiative will be “part of the solution” but rejects any right-wing alliance that includes Chega.
“The liberal initiative will not agree to any understanding with radical extremist parties, left or right, because this is not the way of the growth of the country, this is not the growth of confidence, future, hope, and we want to transform the country without playing the Portuguese against the Portuguese, without fear, without xenophobic and populist ideas,” he said.
Rui Rocha, at the call of journalists, also commented on the relationship between the president of the republic and the government, saying that “the Portuguese are tired of soap operas about the mood between the prime minister and the president of the republic.”
“In real life, people feel sick and need to be respected, they need solutions to the difficulties they face, not soap operas that add nothing to the Portuguese table,” he concluded.