The president of Chega said today that his party is “absolutely exempt” from enabling the State Budget, but admitted approving a rectification and considered that, given the “swamp” situation, new elections would be preferable.
“Chega feels absolutely free to make any AD government instrument viable, because for weeks Chega said it was available for a sustainable four-year government agreement. Legitimately, Luís Montenegro’s government said we don’t want to, let’s talk, especially with the PS. Today we hear the PS saying that it doesn’t want to talk, especially with AD,” he said.
André Ventura blamed Montenegro for not wanting to make “a four-year agreement” with Chega and argued that it will be up to the PS to “give the country the stability it needs” and make the next state budgets viable.
Considering that Luís Montenegro’s executive risks being “one of the shortest in the history of democracy”, Ventura said that the “scenario is absolutely precarious” and argued that it was “better” to go “to elections now”.
“Because it’s clear to everyone that there is no parliamentary base of support for this government and this, in a parliamentary system like Portugal’s, is absolutely suicidal,” he said, considering that Luís Montenegro and Pedro Nuno Santos will be “responsible for the political crisis that is certainly looming.”
The president of Chega was speaking to journalists in the Portuguese Parliament, moments after the Socialist secretary-general, Pedro Nuno Santos, warned the government that it cannot be “fixated on waiting for the PS to come and solve the problem or give the majority that the Portuguese people decided not to give to AD” (the coalition that brought together the PSD, CDS-PP and PPM).
The president of Chega pointed out that the prime minister, Luís Montenegro, “made it clear” in his inauguration speech “that the commitment he wanted was with the PS” and that the socialist secretary-general, Pedro Nuno Santos, wanted to “shake the water out of the bottle”, saying “that he doesn’t feel any duty to make the Democratic Alliance’s program and the budget viable”.
“This creates a scenario in Portuguese politics that is absolutely unbelievable,” of a government that “insists on not building a majority”, he criticized, saying that it is “an absolute swamp”.
“It seems that AD wants to provoke a political crisis quickly in order to have some kind of majority that they dream in their heads is possible,” he criticized, accusing Montenegro of “amateurism”.
Ventura also argued that Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa “is one of those responsible” for this situation, “because he didn’t promote policies of understanding that were fundamental and that any President of the Republic would promote in similar circumstances”.
The Chega leader also called on the government to “move forward quickly” with the presentation of an amending budget because “apparently there is consensus on some issues” such as the fight against corruption, the recovery of teachers’ length of service, the enhancement of public administration careers, the extension to other security forces of the supplement granted to the Judicial Police or the lowering of taxes.
André Ventura said he wanted to “prevent measures as important as these from falling by the wayside in this legislature”.
“We can compromise on an amending budget that will be presented in the next few days or weeks, after April 25th. Chega will not compromise on the State Budget, because that is the major macro-policy of the government, which has insisted on having no agreement with Chega,” he said.
