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Catarina Martins presented the decision of the National Bureau to vote against OE’2021. Read here the declarations of the blockade coordinator, the balance of negotiations and the resolution approved unanimously here.
Statements by Catarina Martins at the press conference that followed the National Table of the Left Bloc this Sunday:
“We are experiencing the greatest crisis of our lives and it will get worse in the coming months.
So we gave the government all the support it needed for the emergency measures and the Supplementary Budget. The Left Bloc vote allowed the government to buy hospital equipment and hire staff, support employment, security, schools, serve the most affected and support the economy. We do not miss and will not miss Portugal.
That is why we demand, in the Budget for 2021, the common sense of measures that defend our country against the pandemic and unemployment. We do not accept nor will we accept that the Budget and the responses for next year will fail Portugal.
The first of these responses is not to let the National Health Service collapse.
In December of last year, we signed an agreement with the government to strengthen the SNS in 2020 with another 4,200 professionals, increase the means of diagnosis and develop a mental health program.
We did not anticipate the arrival of Covid at that time, but we were well aware of the difficulties of the service that protects our common home.
That agreement was not fulfilled by the government and only now, at the end of the year and after a lot of pressure, have some measures been taken but the deficiencies are visible.
At a time when strengthening the NHS was most necessary, the government failed.
But here is the key to our life: we need more professionals, more qualified, better services and more resources.
If the SNS is not rebuilt at the base, with more doctors, nurses and technicians dedicated to public health and care for people, as proposed by António Arnaut and João Semedo in their basic law, we will be condemning it to its rapid degradation.
There is no more time to lose. Either it is in 2021 that we save the NHS, when we have the economic margin to start its great reform, or we accept the disease that will consume it.
Everybody knows that it is so. The SNS had fewer doctors in September than in January this year. Many will be retiring next year, and others may be leaving. Hospital services, which live off the immense and heroic devotion of their professionals, are bursting and we have not yet reached the worst moments of the pandemic.
It is not by spending 500 million on laboratories and private health that the difficulties of the hospitals and health centers that our people trust are alleviated. This is not just a money problem. It is a question of responsibility.
It is now that we have to bring the best to the NHS. This change cannot be postponed. If there are no exclusive careers and the necessary number of professionals, the SNS will not be able to protect us. And we have to be sure that it continues to be the best defense of our democracy, as it always has been.
We have been discussing this emergency with the government for a year and sadly, Covid has made it much more urgent. But it was not possible to agree on a solid plan to safeguard the SNS.
This SO fails on the most important issue of our time. It does not give Portugal the guarantee that we will have enough technicians and conditions for hospitals to protect us. When you ask the NHS for everything, this Budget does not have the common sense to protect you.
For this reason, the National Table of the Left Bloc unanimously decided to vote against the OE proposal, as it was formulated.
I also want to tell you that we believe that there has been progress during the negotiations. We won’t play no blame game. We listen to and record government proposals. In some cases, the dialogue effort made it possible to take steps of approximation and build a proposal with concrete figures and data.
We regret that it has not been possible to create a new social benefit against impoverishment that ensures that the victims of the crisis do not fall below the poverty line. We understand some limitations invoked by the government, which preferred to extend extraordinary support, but we cannot follow the downward revisions in scope or value.
How many people, who have lost everything or almost everything, will be left without the social support they need?
We will see carefully how the proposals are voted in parliament, in the specialty debate. But we have it clear: we do not accept a Budget that does not overcome the social emergency in which we live.
We are trying to reach an agreement on the end of the labor regulations imposed on us by the troika. They were designed to facilitate layoffs, reduce wages and increase precariousness.
Although they are not measures to increase spending, the government rejects them. The government even rejects the positions defended by the PS, during the Troika era, on severance pay.
Even when the government accepted a provisional change, such as suspending the unilateral expiration of collective agreements, which has served the large employers to annul negotiated rules and which defended workers, it rejects a definitive change in the law and promises to return this punishment to workers already here. two years ago.
It also insists on maintaining an unfairly long probationary period and refuses to protect precarious companies that are supported by the state.
The Block cannot accept the abandonment of those who make a living from their work, of the younger and more precarious generations.
And finally, we tried an agreement to avoid the contractual abuse that Lone Star has imposed on Novo Banco. The government has preferred that the state pay even without having verified the accounts for a credible audit.
Therefore, I remind the Prime Minister that, when the contract was signed, he told the country that the operation “will have no direct or indirect impact on public accounts, nor new charges for taxpayers. if no one else says what we all know, the Left Bloc repeats the obvious: this is the financial scandal of our century.
If we are the only ones defending taxpayers and depositors against Lone Star, so be it. But the stability of the banking system cannot be questioned by bankrupt businesses and forays by financial adventurers; It is a matter of common sense.
In this emergency in which Portugal lives, yes, what counts is common sense. That is why we must not waste time or let the country sink into difficulties. We need a competent budget, determined governance, political convergence and open dialogue capable of producing solid options. This is the commitment that the Left Bloc reaffirms to all of you ”.
At the National Bureau meeting this Sunday, a review of the negotiation process with the government was made and a resolution was adopted that can be read here.
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