About Portugal, nothing
What is Rui Rio’s project for the country? None. In four years of PSD leadership, he has not known a proposal.
What is Paulo Rangel’s project? The same. He is in the same political line as Rui Rio and was until recently one of his main supporters, leading a list to the national council.
The dispute in the PSD has nothing to do with different views for the country. It comes down to differences in style and personality. Just because of that, each one argues that they will have more chances to win an António Costa.
Proposals or political positions are not discussed, where both oscillate between vacuum and generalities. Lacking ideas, the dispute becomes personal.
If Rangel accuses Rio of being too soft with the government, Rio responds that Rangel’s aggressiveness earned him the PSD’s biggest defeat ever (21.9%). If Rio attacks Rangel for vying for leadership when the party deviates from joining the legislative, Rangel counters that Rio is only afraid of losing.
About Portugal, nothing. Education, health or economics, no proposals. Increases in pensions or the minimum wage, nothing to say. Rio has no program. Rangel will start thinking about it. It would be comical, if not tragic, to see candidates for the biggest party of approval propose to govern without an idea for the country.
Sad spectacle has reserved the PSD for us. At the end of the two worst years of our lives, the PSD has nothing more to offer than an internal war with an almost tribal outline.
An honorable defeat at the local authorities made the barons dream again. Rio knows that he won’t get there alone, so he has the CDS (a toxic asset these days) and hasn’t closed the door on André Ventura. Rangel prefers to go alone; then it will soon be seen. Just as Rui Rio was a member of Chega in the Azores, Rangel spent a decade with Orbán on his bench in the European Parliament.
Very soon, the Portuguese will be called upon to decide whether the next prime minister will be one of these two candidates or António Costa.
Voting for António Costa will mean pursuing the policy that increased the Portuguese advances and reduced inequalities, at the same time that it made us grow more than our European partners and kept the right accounts, as had never happened in a democracy. Voting for the PSD candidate will represent an unknown, an absence of proposals and a lack of direction for the country.
Knowing the premises, everything might seem predictable or even relatively obvious. But if one thing we can learn from the result of the local authorities in Lisbon, it is that the politics sometimes in the reserves are big surprises.
The country needs a clear course, a stable path that will lead us progressively to a better future. The Portuguese know who interests them and don’t want big surprises.
17 VALUES
António Guterres
At the Climate Conference taking place in Glasgow, the UN Secretary General made an appeal that no one should remain indifferent: “It is time to say enough is enough. Choose ambition, choose solidarity, choose to safeguard the future of humanity.” If we listen, then there is hope.
MEP