The leader of the Liberal Initiative (IL) said today that the government’s “state of grace” is over, considering that the promised fiscal shock is just “a touch-up” and accused the PSD of starting to have “transparency and decency problems”.
“The state of grace [of the government] ended after 48 hours because, somehow, what we’ve had now is the government, the PSD, trying not to be clear on this matter,” said Rui Rocha, in Matosinhos, in the district of Porto, taking part in an event with European liberals dedicated to the European elections
According to Rui Rocha, who pointed out that since August 2023 IL had been pointing out that the PSD’s objective in fiscal matters “was very little”, he considered that what the government program promised, and which had already been promised in the election campaign, “is not a fiscal shock, it’s a fiscal touch-up”.
Rui Rocha pointed out that he had questioned the government about the 1.5 billion euros in IRS relief mentioned by the Prime Minister this Thursday, at the start of the debate on the government’s program, and that Luis Montenegro had not clarified it.
“The Prime Minister wouldn’t clarify and then Bernardo Blanco da IL asked the Finance Minister, Miranda Sarmento, what it was like and he wouldn’t answer either. The PSD has a huge responsibility here, it wanted to tell the country that it was making a fiscal shock, letting that image pass, never clarifying, when we are talking about a fiscal touch-up,” he pointed out.
The president of the Liberals also compared Montenegro’s government to António Costa’s: “I can only compare this attempt to convey an image that doesn’t correspond to reality with another situation, which happened a while ago, when António Costa wanted to convince pensioners that he was giving them an extraordinary increase when at the same time he tried to cut a billion euros from pensions,” he said.
“Unfortunately, at the very beginning of the coalition’s governance, we found ourselves in a very similar situation: there was no effort or will to clarify things for the Portuguese, so if there is no effort or will, it’s because you don’t want to be clear.”
Also on the sidelines of the same event, Cotrim de Figueiredo, the former leader of the IL and the party’s list leader in the European elections, not only considered that the current government owes the country an explanation, but that it is already showing problems of “essence, transparency” and that “there are already starting to be problems of decency”, but he also sounded a warning about the PS.
“Listen more to IL today, now, because the PS propaganda machine has already entered the field to try to say that the tax reform that the PSD is proposing is only a sixth of what the PS proposed, giving the idea that it is smaller than what the PS proposed,” he said.
He concluded: “No, it’s only a seventh of what the PS proposed, but it’s bigger nonetheless.”
In an interview with RTP this Friday, Finance Minister Miranda Sarmento argued that the IRS reduction promised by the government is “more ambitious” than the measure that has been in force since the beginning of 2024, but clarified that it will be around 200 million euros.
Miranda Sarmento clarified that the 1.5 billion euros in personal income tax relief mentioned by the Prime Minister this Thursday, at the start of the debate on the government’s program, will not be added to the 1.3 billion euros in personal income tax relief included in the State Budget for 2024 and already in force.
