Mortágua accuses PSD of benefiting large companies

BE coordinator Mariana Mortágua said this Saturday that the social-democratic government's program lowers taxes for business giants and large fortunes, while the middle class will pay more for education, health and public services.

“The Government will lower taxes on corporate giants and large fortunes, to make them richer, so that they can buy more properties, more houses” to rent that “will suck up all the salaries of a middle class that no longer has any salary left at the end of the month”, said the Bloco leader.

On the day the Government Programme was delivered to the Assembly of the Republic, Mariana Mortágua, who met in Porto with leaders and supporters of different left-wing parties in Europe, accused the executive and Luís Montenegro of making “the middle class pay more for education, health and public services”.

“All so that the rich become richer and richer, while everyone else is told that the problem is immigrants, that it is immigrants’ fault that they don’t have a home, that it is immigrants’ fault that they don’t have a job, that it is immigrants’ fault that they don’t have a salary,” he added.

Mariana Mortágua spoke at the closing panel “Forces for Change — from the Streets to Parliament”, at the ELA congress — European Left Alliance for the Peoples and the Planet that took place on Friday and today at Alfândega do Porto, and was categorical: “Our responsibility, comrades, is to show, by all means we can, that the right will not improve anyone’s life, but that it is possible to improve everyone’s life”.

For Mariana Mortágua, “it is necessary to explain that reviewing unemployment benefits to encourage entry into the job market means reducing the value of unemployment benefits or reducing the time of access to unemployment benefits or forcing people to accept a job for a salary that is lower than the unemployment benefits for which they contributed while they were working”.

“Reducing the progressive nature of the IRC tax means”, from the Bloco’s point of view, “cutting taxes on profits above one and a half million euros” and “restoring confidence in the rental market means further weakening housing and facilitating evictions”, she said.

Mariana Mortágua also criticized measures related to education and health and accused the PSD executive of wanting to “end universal, free public services”, those, she added, “which found our democracies and which are in fact what remains of the Social State that was destroyed”.

Mariana Mortágua closed her speech with the idea: “One day, a representative of the far right will be asked in the future to tell you what one of their greatest achievements in Portugal was, and they will answer that it was Luís Montenegro’s Government Program, supported by the Socialist Party.”

The Program of the XXV Constitutional Government, resulting from the legislative elections of May 18th won by the AD (PSD/CDS) coalition, was delivered today to the Assembly of the Republic by the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Carlos Abreu Amorim, and will be discussed in the Assembly of the Republic on Tuesday and Wednesday.

At the press conference following the Government meeting, the Minister of the Presidency, António Leitão Amaro, classified the document as “an ambitious program to transform the country”, structured around 10 priority axes, including State reform, regulated immigration, increased income, local security, housing or defense.

The PCP has already announced that it will present a motion of rejection, but the communists' initiative is certain to fail, since, in addition to the PSD and CDS, it will also not have the support of Chega and the PS.