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Left Bloc, PSD, CDS-PP, Chega and the Liberal Initiative voted against the document.
In the run-up to the final global vote, the Minister of State and Finance stressed that “The emergence of Covid-19 launched the world into a public health crisis and an unprecedented economic and social crisis”.
“After growth of 2.2 percent in 2019, the Portuguese economy is expected to contract 8.5 percent this year,” João Leão lamented, adding that at this time “The first big priority [do Governo] is to fight against the pandemic and strengthen the National Health Service “.
The Minister of State and Finance took the opportunity to accuse the PSD of wanting to “force the State to default”, referring to the cancellation of the transfer of 476 million euros to Novo Banco.
At the end of the vote, the Prime Minister told reporters that “The outlook is very tough, but today we leave the Assembly of the Republic with an important new instrument”.
Regarding the disapproval of a new transfer to Novo Banco, sealed by PSD and Bloco de Esquerda, António Costa did not skimp on his criticism, lamenting that “the parties have defected or have not resisted the populist temptation”, after thanking the political formations that made it possible. the State Budget for next year.
Shortly after, the leader of the PSD, Rui Rio, referred to the Government the doubts about the Novo Banco, that is to say, if the institution is fulfilling its part of the contract.
Before the final vote, the Socialist Party recalled that the pandemic has worsened and that the state of emergency has been decreed, although now there is hope that a vaccine will be approaching, and that OE2021 aims precisely to help the country recover.
“It is more important than ever to continue fighting to mitigate the economic and social effects of this crisis, and that is what the parliamentary group of the Socialist Party promised”, declared Ana Catarina Mendes, parliamentary leader of the PS.
“I don’t know in which country the right-wing deputies are. But it is good that we are all once again aware that we are in a global public health emergency that calls on countries to act, doing so with what the PSD lacked: responsibility, determination and prudence ”.
The deputy added that “This is the State Budget for a difficult year, in which the effects of the pandemic will be felt even more, both in public health and in the economic and social dimension”.
Ana Catarina Mendes took the opportunity to criticize the Block, despite opening the door to a restart. “The Bloc repeats the error of its vote in most of this State Budget: Voting against its own proposals, and wanting to pave the way for Portugal to return to austerity, this time hand in hand with the populist right of extreme right”. , said.
Nevertheless, the PS said it was “open, as always, to this dialogue and we will do everything possible so that the separation that we saw here today between the Bloc and the progressive forces is not repeated ”.
In the PSD intervention, the party stated that The State Budget for 2021 will be that of “thigh contraption” and he challenged the government to present to Parliament the cost estimate of the “concessions” to the PCP and other “circumstantial allies.”
The intervention fell on the vice president of the PSD, Isaura Morais, who reiterated the criticism that the budget came out “worse” in the specialty than it had entered this phase. “The version that we will vote on shortly is a defeat for the PS and a clear victory for the PCP, which managed to bring the Government to its knees, imposing everything it wanted.”, he considered.
The Social Democratic leader included in these concessions, not only “the total conditioning of the State Budget, but the holding of the PCP Congress this weekend, during the state of emergency, and” more political commitments, beyond the document itself. .
“Can the Government present to this chamber an estimate of the various costs, both in the short and long term, that the commitments with the Communist Party and the other circumstantial allies dragged on?” He questioned, estimating that they will be “hundreds of millions of euros. expense “the most.
“In this budget, the Government was more alone, with an increasingly ‘little’ support base and, therefore, more dependent on those that still remain, that is, basically on the Communist Party, to which the PAN and the unregistered deputies have joined. It’s the budget for the thigh gadget, ”he said.
Before the vote, when reconfirming the voting power of the Left Bloc, Catarina Martins defended that the Government’s Budget proposal “is from another era.”
“A time when there was no second wave pandemic, a time when it was possible to believe that minimal aid would support the work, that acting on the margins would come so that poverty does not explode, that the tireless dedication of the SNS professionals is enough to overcome all weaknesses ”.
The bloc leader recalled that, nine months after the start of the pandemic, unemployment accelerated, the cases of contagion by Covid-19 and hospitalizations in intensive care increased and “The policy of margins and minimums” is no longer enough.
Catarina Martins also defended that, with the “‘arrival'” of the PSD and the “failure of the ambition of the absolute majority”, the PS “can only govern if it seeks an agreement with the left.”
“I really want to thank Dr. Rui Rio. In recent years, no one has done as much in such a short time to strengthen the position of the left as Dr. Rui Rio. By choosing an alliance with the xenophobic far right, the PSD isolated, but also He showed the PS that if the ambition of the absolute majority has failed, he can only govern if he seeks an agreement with the left“warned the BE leader.
Congressman João Almeida classified the State Budget proposal for 2021 as “a patchwork mosaic”, justifying the vote against CDS in the final global vote.
“A government without direction and without will was at the mercy of communist anachronism and animalist radicalism,” said João Almeida, considering that “The result was a mosaic, capable of ignoring central problems and, at the same time, going into details on matters that should never be part of a State Budget”.
The centrist deputy accused the PS and the government of having carried out “a real negotiation dominated by partisans.”
From the perspective of the CDS, the budget process was “an introspective process, directed by the interests of the parties, without due attention to the situation in the country and without an answer to the questions of the moment ”.
The PCP leader justified the abstention from the State Budgets for 2021 by allowing a “more effective response to problems”, but warned that the crisis requires more measures, such as increasing the national minimum wage.
The “global response to the serious economic and social situation requires measures that are not limited to the budget”, “from the beginning” the “increase in the national minimum wage and the general increase in all salaries, including public administration”, but also “the change in labor legislation in relation to its onerous standards,” said Jerónimo de Sousa.
“What has been achieved” in the conversations with the Government in this OE2021 “through the intervention of the PCP allows a more effective response to relevant problems and opens the possibility that others may be resolved.”
“As or more important than approving proposals in this assembly is the government’s political will to implement them, we reaffirm that it is the response to the country’s problems and not submission to the deficit that should determine the execution of the budget,” he explained.
The Ecological Party “Os Verdes” (ENV) admitted that it was possible to “have gone further” in the 2021 State Budgets, which decided to make it viable by abstention and promised to monitor the Government in its compliance.
The abstention of the PEV is “a vote in defense of the people” and that “leaves an immense responsibility” to the Government, which “with this budget is obliged to respond to the wishes of the people,” said the deputy of the Greens Mariana Silva to the end of debate. OE2021.
“We will be here to charge you for that,” he said, ending the speech.
Earlier, in her speech, Mariana Silva listed some of her proposals agreed with the Government and that justified abstaining in the final global vote.
Two examples are the “review of the choice of location for Lisbon International Airport”, through a “strategic environmental assessment”, and “make transparent the tender for the exploration and exploration of lithium and associated minerals.”
PAN spokesman André Silva said he hoped that PS and Government go beyond “dialogue of convenience in times of hardship” and adopt “a constructive and convergent stance” to ensure political stability.
André Silva left this warning at the end of the discussion of the State Budgets for 2021 in the Assembly of the Republic, after justifying the abstention of the PAN in the final global vote, arguing that there were “unequivocal advances” in the specialty, but that the diploma is “insufficient in some areas”.
Faced with these deficiencies, the PAN will abstain from the final global vote on this Budget, highlighting that, especially in a context of unpredictable and multi-dimensional crisis, it is important to remind the PS and the Government that they do not have an absolute majority and that dialogue it is the only possible way to guarantee political stability, “he said.
The president of Chega predicted the return of the right to power in Portugal “very soon”, predicting that “this is the last budget led by António Costa”, whom he considered “desperate and quartered.”
“I’m not a psychic, but I dare say that this is the last budget led by António Costa and I also know that very soon – it is written in the stars – the right will return to power in Portugal“he predicted.
For the leader of the far-right parliamentary party, the recent agreement for the viability of the Regional Government of the Azores, with PSD, CDS-PP, PPM and Liberal Initiative, was “only the first step” to “recover the dignity of a country that he never had another strategy if his hand does not extend to Europe ”.
Second Ventura, “This is the budget, not to divide to reign, but to distribute to sustain itself”Because the Costa executive is “desperate and stagnant, in the vote of the PAN, the PCP and two unregistered deputies” and “he knows there is no way to continue.”
“(OE2021) will distribute to those who know it or believe that they will be faithful in a call to the polls that we all know will be soon,” he said.
The Liberal Initiative accused the PS of handle “bad in times of fat cows” and “bad in times of thin cows”, in the debate on the State Budget that, he said, has money for “electoral and political clientele.”
“This budget debate served to show that there is a huge disorientation of the government, which does not know what it is doing in the fight against the pandemic, we all understand that, This budget also shows that you have no idea or strategy to recover the economy, which is scandalously the poor relative of this budget ”, he criticized.
Cotrim de Figueiredo also considered that the budget for next year has money “for electoral and political clientele”, for “public investment with non-existent and doubtful return”, money to “bury in TAP”, to “increase the payroll of the public function “. “but not for areas such as health or reducing the tax burden.
