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António Costa assumed these positions in an interview he gave to the weekly Expresso on the 21st, after being asked if there will be a risk of austerity if the Government does not reach a budget agreement with the Left Bloc and the PCP.
“If there is no agreement, it is simple: there is no budget and there is a political crisis. There we will be discussing the date when the president [da República] We will have to do the inevitable ”, he replied.
In a message addressed mainly to the leftist partners of the PS in parliament, António Costa considers that “whoever does not want to assume responsibilities should dedicate himself to another activity”, because political activity requires “assumption of responsibilities.”
“The other parties do not want to take responsibility for unemployment in January 2022? Whoever shuns responsibility for the problems shuns the responsibility of defining solutions. If we want less unemployment in 2022, we have to define policies in time,” he defended.
Faced with the scenario of left-wing parties leaving the PS and the government alone with the PSD to make next year’s budget feasible, the prime minister said he would not ask the Social Democrats to vote against or to abstain.
“What I want to make very clear, and I have already left it to the PCP and the BE, is that, if they dream that they are going to put the PS in a position to go to negotiate with the PSD the continuation of the Government, they can remove the horse from the rain, because we will not negotiate for the right the subsistence of this Government ”, stressed António Costa.
In this interview, the prime minister once again de-dramatized the vote against the PCP in the Supplementary Budget for 2020 and expressed his confidence in the possibility of a left-wing agreement.
“The PCP has been very clear in highlighting that the vote it gave in the Supplementary had to do with an analysis that does not correspond to any change in its political line or an inability to dialogue in the future. In fact, I have already had meetings with Catarina Martins and Jerónimo de Sousa. I do not take for granted that the PCP has abandoned the will to continue being an active partner in the search for solutions, “he defended.
Soon after, however, António Costa left a new warning: “No Portuguese realizes that, given the enormous severity of this crisis, there is no effort to respond positively.”
“It would be a great mistake if the Portuguese left did not understand that this is the historic opportunity it has not only to respond to the crisis but to do so with a vision of ambition, of strategic requalification,” he argued.
In other words, according to the executive leader, “the entire response agenda to this crisis is a response of convergence of the left.”
“If the political forces for whom the strengthening of the social State is fundamental are not understood, it is difficult for me to understand the political rationality of distancing at a time when all that is required is approximation,” he added.
