Cavaco says that the Government was not able to take advantage of the conditions ″inherited″ from the previous executive
Former President of the Republic Aníbal Cavaco Silva said today that the current socialist government, “supported by the far-left parties, has not been able to build good conditions for the sustainability of the Portuguese economy inherited” from the PSD / CDS executive.
In an opinion article in the weekly Expresso, Cavaco Silva accuses António Costa’s government of not having followed the same method as Ireland, after having left, like Portugal, “cleanly from the Financial Assistance Program that in 2021 negotiated with the troika “.
But the former Head of State also criticized the Government’s opponents, denouncing an “alternative to the weak and aimless, lacking a consistent strategy”.
“Portugal continued to grow less than the countries with which it should be compared and the relative impoverishment, which deviation has started to reverse, continued to worsen. It has been the reflection of a victory of the far-left parties supporting the Government, One of the objectives is the weakening of the growth factors of our economy, which explicitly support Governments of countries where dictatorship and misery prevail,” he shoots.
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For the former head of state, the fight against poverty “has never been an effective priority of the Communist Party and the Left Bloc”.
However, Aníbal Cavaco Silva notes that Portugal will receive financial support from the European Union (EU) and the European Central Bank (ECB), between 2021 and 2027, “of a very high amount, never before verified”.
According to the former President of the Republic, even with the support “there will not be a reversal of the country’s relative decadence”, criticizing the economic policy guidelines of the current Government.
“Without a clear change of direction, which allows to overcome the obstacles to economic and social development, Portugal will continue to fall towards the tail of the euro zone in terms of wealth of use per inhabitant. It will be painful to see the country a golden opportunity to get closer . of the EU’s front platoon,” he warns.
With several criticisms of the Socialist Party Government, Cavaco Silva claims that the Executive “lost notion of the role of the tax system in the country’s economic and social development.”
“Guided by mere electoral interests, the Government bets, above all, on the expansion of consumption, which, in the short term, can be seen as an objective, but it is not a means of promoting sustainable economic growth and lasting improvement of the well-being of the population in a country with high indebtedness like Portugal. This wrong option is joined by the ideological attitude against big companies and unfavorable to private initiative and innovation”, he indicates.
According to the irrelevant pandemic context in the analysis of the country’s relative impoverishment, the former head of State states that “the virus also affects other EU countries” with which Portugal compares itself and that “it is of no use […] of apology for the mistakes of the Socialist Government”.
“The impoverishment of the country has been shrouded, to the discredit of our democracy, in a shadow of silence. Several factors have contributed to this. From the outset, a weak and aimless policy, lacking a consistent strategy of denouncing errors, omissions and attitudes ethically reprehensible of the Government, “he accuses.
Cavaco Silva also claims that many Portuguese “are afraid to criticize the Government” because they have been harmed in their personal professional or business life, including that of family members.
“For the socialist power, merit counts for little, to which is added a threatening, rude and even offensive language with which it attacks those who dare to criticize the Government. For some people with a weaker backbone, the support of the Socialist Government is seen as the best position to ascend beyond the principle of Peter, “stresses.
According to the former President of the Republic, a “socialist bet on silencing the country’s relative impoverishment is an expression of the loss of quality in Portuguese democracy”, arguing that it is also explained by the media’s subservience to the Government’s logic, to its propaganda and misinformation, in a clear departure from the principles of independence and truth that should guide, which has been publicly denounced by experts in the sector”.
Attacking the various PS Governments, from António Guterres to José Sócrates to António Costa, Cavaco Silva says it is “painful to verify that, in 16 years, he has already been overtaken by the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania and Slovenia and that they are skillful. that, in the next two or three years, the same will happen with Poland, Hungary, Romania, Latvia and Slovakia”.
“In the two decades of the 21st century, the Portuguese economy grew at an average annual rate of only 0.5%. According to a study by the Bank of Portugal, production per inhabitant of Portugal in 2018 was worse than in 1995”, he adds.