PSD president Luís Montenegro today accused the new PS leader, Pedro Nuno Santos, of having a speech without ideas, claiming that he squeezes, but nothing comes out.
“I think that was clear last night. You squeeze, you squeeze and nothing comes out. What about solutions, what about a path and a plan and a goal?” asked the opposition leader.
Luís Montenegro was speaking at the Christmas lunch of the Aveiro district, which took place at the Castelo de Paiva Secondary School, with around 600 PSD militants and sympathizers.
For the Social Democrat president, this is the time to say what you want to do to the country and what you have to give.
“Since the PS doesn’t have any ideas, we’ll tell them what ours are and they’ll say whether they agree or not,” he said.
In what he said was a Christmas spirit, Montenegro put forward proposals for various sectors, starting with a promise that young people up to the age of 35 will not have to pay an IRS rate of more than 15 percent, in order to put an end to “Portugal’s biggest waste”, which is young people going abroad to work.
Young couples will have free access to crèches, whose network will be expanded, involving the social and private sectors, he said.
The PSD leader reaffirmed the proposal to fully recover teachers’ length of service over five years, corresponding to 20% each year, a measure which he said would cost the state 300 million euros.
Still on the subject of education, he signaled that if he becomes prime minister, his government will guarantee the recovery of learning.
Montenegro then asked the new PS leader if he regretted his policies as housing minister, given the crisis in the sector, which is penalizing young people in particular.
He said that the Social Democrats, if they become government, propose to make public investment in the sector and give incentives to private companies to build more housing.
For the middle class, he promised to lower the IRS, criticizing the situation in Portugal, where some “people who work have less income than people who don’t work”.
For the PSD, the time has come to put an end to the ideology in health and education policies pursued by the PS governments and inspired by the PCP and BE.
“The left is destroying public services,” he said, pointing to the situation of schools and hospitals in Portugal after so many years of socialist rule, pushing people to go private.
Assuring that he does not intend to privatize anything, Montenegro defended the fact that the PSD is not right-wing.
“We’re not right-wing, we’re more of the center, we’re for the people, we’re the people’s party,” he said.
For pensioners, the opposition leader put forward a proposal that he said was “very simple”.
By 2028, he reiterated, every pensioner will have a guaranteed income of 820 euros per month, guaranteed by the state.
