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Rui Rio’s PSD will vote against the State Budget for 2021 (OE2021). The decision will only be released in five days, but the Observer knows that everything is ready to throw the Government into the arms of the Bloco de Esquerda and the PCP: António Costa will really have to make the left’s document viable or be consistent with the promised. and submit the resignation.
At the end of September, in an interview with Expresso, the Prime Minister made it clear that the day this government depended on the PSD, it would end. “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 take the horse out of the rain, because we are not going to negotiate the right to subsistence for this Government,” he dismissed.
The truth is that Costa’s response had a second part: “I’m not going to ask the PSD to vote against or to abstain.” An idea that he repeated this Friday in an interview with Public. Between the lines: if Rui Rio, on his own initiative, decided to make the Budget viable, it was up to him; the prime minister would not move a muscle for that purpose.
But this hypothesis, The Observer knows, is not part of Rui Rio’s plans. The idea is to vote against the State Budget and wait for António Costa to take off his boot. The thesis that circulates in the hard core of the Social Democratic leader is that if the marriage of the left did well in health – in times of economic boom, read – it must endure the disease. Read: the PS will have to face the economic and social crisis that the country is going through and that has everything to get worse before starting to improve.
In a scenario of great unpredictability of the left, the moment chosen to announce the decision – Wednesday, October 21 at the party’s parliamentary days – acquires special importance. The PSD will say that it will vote against the State Budgets before the Bloco de Esquerda (October 25) and the PCP (which did not close any date, but promised to fight until the general vote, scheduled for October 28).
Now, if Rio announced the vote after the government’s left partners, it would do little or nothing if Block and / or PCP allowed the Budget to be viable. In this scenario, the PSD’s position would be little more than irrelevant.
In the event that the left definitely complicates life for the Government, everything would be even worse: the approval of the Budget would be in the hands of Rui Rio and the the pressure would be tremendous -especially because the Social Democratic leader has always tried to assert as a brand image the idea that he puts the national interest before the interest of the party.
By making the decision earlier, and the decision will lead to leadership, the PSD will put pressure on the left side that will have to decide ‘yes or soups’: either they shake hands with the government (and become co-responsible for the government) or they stay outside and are seen as irresponsible.
The idea is to point out, at every opportunity, the weakness of the left majority in Parliament. “With the country as it is, these people are setting a very bad example. It is unconditional irresponsibility”Criticizes a member of the hard core of Rio. In Parliament, Duarte Pacheco, vice president of the PSD parliamentary bench, did not hide, in fact, any fun with the tension in the apparently disappeared ‘geringoça’. “We have seen angry boyfriends and purposes of Catholic marriages with less violence what you are providing here, “said the Social Democrat.
It was not even the first time that the PSD showed signs that it would be willing to miss the budget. Also at the end of September, in an interview with TVI, Nuno Morais Sarmento was particularly tough on António Costa. “The PD is ‘oh man, oh man!’ to approve a decisive Budget ”. Even before António Costa handed him over, the PSD vice president said emphatically that the PSD would never lend a hand to the prime minister. “It is a scenario that is not presented. [Se as negociações à esquerda falharem] unfortunately the prime minister will have to resign ”, said the Social Democrat.
Since then, however, a lot of ink has been written in the red lines of the Bloc (which only, with an abstention, can approve the Government Budget) and in the hesitations of the PCP. In the middle, there were also messages from Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and the presidential pull to Rui Rio.
However, none of this changed the strategy of the Social Democrats. Essentially, for a reason: First, no one is taking the existential drama of the ‘contraption’ seriously, particularly the ultimatums of the Bloco de Esquerda. There is a deep conviction, among various members of the PSD leadership, that the Budget will really be approved and that all this is nothing more than a comic opera.
What happens if the budget does not pass? There are no closed answers precisely because it is a scenario to which little reliability is attributed. But there is a common understanding: as designed, this budget cannot accept the ‘yes’ of the PSD. You would have to do it from scratch, remember that if the document fails, Costa, in theory, will have to present a new one, or work hard to deserve the attention of Rui Rio.
In any case, this is a question that does not arise now: it is António Costa who has a political crisis on his hands; and has to untie the knot. Rui Rio, this one, will see him in a car seat until October 28.
