Mayor of Lisbon will vote on the budget on Monday or Tuesday
The mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas (PSD), said this Friday that he will “try to do everything” so that the municipal budget meeting for voting for 2022 “is close as early as Monday or Tuesday”.
“I can’t go to a council meeting today without being sure that things will go normally, because it’s the prestige of the institution”, Carlos following the suspension of Coins, on the fifth of the discussions and voting on the budget and the major options of the plan for 2022-2026, after the PS had an error for “an error of 40 million euros” in the distribution of funds, particularly in housing.
Speaking to the Lusa agency, the PSD mayor assured that “the services of the chamber control today that there was no error”, explaining that the situation: “There are no tables of an annex, not of the budget, but of the great options of the plan, when classifying the various types of expenditure, in one of the tables in which there was a part of that value that was housing there was also rehabilitation, above all, for example , of day care centers”.
Considering that this change “is not very serious”, the Mayor of Lisbon reinforced that the existing budget for housing, in which 116.2 million euros are foreseen for this, although it also includes recovery and habitat, should not be “real estate investment for the people of Lisbon and for the life of the people of Lisbon, so this value is there, nothing has changed, there is no more or less”.
Carlos Moedas said that this type of ruckus as the classification of funds “is what happens in all budgets, not only of the Chamber, but of the State”.
“It’s interesting that you ask the opposition 39 times as long as asked, more than 39 times were made, so this type of change 39 times was made by the previous executive. What do they call a mistake?”, questioned the social democrat, regretting that the work of the chamber’s financial management is being called into question and stressing that “there is absolutely no mistake in the budget”.
The PSD highlighted “a breach of trust with those of the PS, who on Wednesday announced that they would have to make the budget viable and on the following day” there would be “completely blocking a meeting, inventing an error that abs. Exists”, referring referring to the electoral moment of the laws, referring to the electoral moment of the laws, in which “there is this type of exploitation that is made by the policies not”.
“The situation at the moment is that I cannot trust the Socialist Party councilors who have had this attitude, so I am very careful before having a meeting”, indicated the end of the Lisbon autarchy, expressing doubts about what the Socialists’ vote on the budget will be and “if more problems go away and block another meeting”.
Carlos Moedas’ team is “review all the documents, to see if everything is ok, if there is anything that is not in the charts”, for which it also asks for the collaboration of opposition councilors.
Asked if the vote on the municipal budget can be delayed after the legislative laws of January 3, the mayor of Lisbon replied: “I’m going to do everything I can to get this Tuesday meeting meeting prepared, before we see it, but we have to have a meeting where the meeting advisors tell me if they have any problems with the schedules.”
The Lisbon Municipal Assembly, which had scheduled a discussion and vote for next Tuesday’s budget, was not deliberated on the meeting of the series approved in Thursday’s Chamber, reported this Friday that “received from the City Council a guarantee that a new meeting will be held to evaluate the budget in the coming days”, decided to schedule a session in this context for Thursday, 27 January.
Governing the city without an absolute majority, the executive chaired by Carlos Moedas (PSD), with seven majorities from the “Novos Tempos” coalition (PSD/CDS-PP/MPT/PPM/Aliança), must achieve the feasibility of the budget proposal, since the five councilors of the PS have already announced that they are going to the absolute vote “as a matter of democratic principle and to guarantee stability in the management of the municipality”, noting that such “non-agreement”.
Councilors from PCP, BE, Livre and independent councilor Paula Marques (elected by the PS/Livre coalition) have already anticipated that they will vote against.
This is the first municipal budget of the 2021-2025 mandate, under the president of the social democrat Carlos Moedas, in a proposal presented foresees an expense of 1.16 million euros for this year, an amount “very in line” with that approved for 2021, under the leadership of the PS, which was 1.15 billion euros.
In the current mandatory (2021-2025), the executive is composed of seven elected by the “Novos Tempos” coalition (three from the PSD, two from the CDS-PP and two independent), who are the only ones with assigned roles, seven by the “Mais Lisboa” (five from PS, one from Livre and one independent), two from the PCP/PEV coalition (both from PCP) and one from BE.