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But the first drink This episode had already occurred two days before, on Sunday, in prime time of the SIC, when the commentator and former PSD leader Luís Marques Mendes had announced what he called a “turnaround” in the negotiations of the State Budget: at last and at last. The PCP, who some (especially the Left Bloc) took for granted would be out of play, finally agreed with the Government. It would make the budget viable. “They already have all the essentials right.” “It is what was agreed,” said the former PSD leader, showing very confident in the information he had.
It is true that that week, on September 30, the PCP had returned to the negotiating table with António Costa for the first time since July. Jerónimo had left the government in the dark for most of the summer, having even canceled a meeting that was scheduled for August 28 – and which the Bloc attended – for “agenda” reasons. First, there was the Festa do Avante, the moment to speak with the militants, and then in a year of congress and municipalities; only later would Jerónimo be available to listen to António Costa again. The first meetings, moreover, had served that purpose: just listening. The communist entourage fell silent and left in silence. He did not make media noise, did not put information in the media. He also said little about what he wanted from that negotiation. Anything.
The Observer knows that until mid-September, what António Costa only had to cling to on the side of the PCP were the specifications that Jerónimo de Sousa had elaborated in the closing speech of the Festa do Avante. Costa knew that the PCP wanted an increase in the national minimum wage (to 850 euros); wanted the creation of a compensation supplement for workers in essential and permanent services; compensation for unhealthy, pain and risk; compensatory compensation and recognition of social protection for shift workers and night work; expand access to unemployment benefits; the elimination of pay cuts associated with leave; the prohibition of dismissals; the end of the expiration of collective bargaining.
The list was long but it reached the recipient. In the debate on the Recovery and Resilience Program, in Parliament, on September 23, Costa noted that: “I retained it again, as I have done. disciplined Since his speech at the end of the Festa do Avante, the multiple concerns that he reveals and that we will try to answer in the joint evaluation what we have in progress“. The words were not innocent, they were chosen according to communist ears.
The friendly cordiality of the partners was there, it was always there, and even when everyone took it for granted that the distance with the PCP was a sign that the communists had a foot in the door (the “theses” of the Congress party, known the day after that debate, they came to give more force to that by taking off from the PS and the contraption), Costa clung to the old and infallible communist coherence. It was that already in the negotiation of the Budget for 2020, the first of the post-contraption era, it had been like this: with the PCP more distant because it did not have a political agreement, that bound it and more focused on technical meetings than political ones, not because of that. stopped voting in favor. Not even on purpose, the Prime Minister got tired of reminding whoever would listen to the words of the communist parliamentary leader, João Oliveira, after voting against the Supplementary Budget: a vote against the Supplementary refers only to the Supplementary and not compromises future negotiations.
When the PCP only kept silent, that is what the Government clung to. And never thought the PCP should be considered lost. On the contrary. In fact, António Costa always had the perception – and this comes from the days of gadgets – that the PCP is the most reliable partner and that nothing written is needed to link it to the agreements. The communist entourage is often praised, indoors, in charge of the Head of Government, who has a special recognition for the preparation of the elements that make up the PCP’s negotiating commissions. For all these reasons, Costa is not easily impressed by the changes in tone and manner of participation of the Communists in these budget meetings. You know that in the end it will hardly ever break, even if the Communists shifted business with the government to technical and less political meetings, as in the days of gadgets.
On the side of the Block, this participation is still not considered sufficient. Catarina Martins even entered the penultimate meeting with the Prime Minister to request more high-level meetings with the Prime Minister. The ruling party was impatient with the lack of progress by the Government as the date for the delivery of the State Budget to Parliament approached. And he was especially upset when he heard António Costa leave an ultimatum in an interview with Expresso.
In late August, with negotiations suspended a month ago, the Prime Minister was Back to school with this sentence: “If there is no agreement, it is simple: there is no budget and there is a political crisis”. BE did not like it and from then on there was tension between the parties. The blockers dramatized the “blackmail,” saying that if that is the case, then the government always has the PSD to approve budgets. Marcelo put the water to boil, he said ‘political crisis’ not even in a dream, and in the second meeting, according to a blocking source, “the Prime Minister already appeared with another position.”
