Lisbon, Oct. 9, 2024 (Lusa) - Portugal's prime minister, Luís Montenegro, has said he is convinced that parliament will approve the state budget for 2025 to be finalised on Wednesday by his right-of-centre coalition government, despite not having received assurances along these lines from the main opposition Socialist Party (PS).
He dismissed the idea of negotiating with the third-largest party, far-right Chega, which he said behaved "like a weather vane".
In an interview with SIC television on Tuesday night, Montenegro announced that work on the budget bill "is closed" and that the final version will be approved in a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, with an agreement with the PS on the IRS Jovem - lower rates of personal income tax (IRS) for people aged up to 35 - but not on planned cuts to corporate income tax (IRC). He said he was leaving it up to the opposition Socialists to decide whether or not to abstain or vote in favour to allow the bill to go through.
Even so, the prime minister expressed his conviction that the budget proposal, which is to be submitted to parliament on Thursday, will be approved by parliament.
"My full conviction is that it will go through," he said. "We're going to have a state budget for 2025. And we're going to have a balanced state budget."
The prime minister argued that the document would not be diminished "by the concessions to the PS" already made, even acknowledging n that the final measures related to IRS Jovem - which involves more progressivity in terms of income, and decreases the number of years that people can take advantage of the measure to 10 - "is more balanced" than the government's initial one.
"I have no trouble recognising that," he said.
Asked about Chega's position if the PS chooses to vote against the budget, Montenegro replied that members of parliament from the party led by André Ventura will do "whatever they want" when it comes to it.
"The different question is whether there will be any negotiation between the government and Chega, because that's completely out of the question," he said. "That's not going to happen: it's not possible to have a productive dialogue with someone who changes his mind so often, with someone who has become a weather vane in this discussion of the state budget and, therefore, has not presented himself in a position to even be able to negotiate with the government."
Asked if, even without negotiation, Chega could help make the document go through, Montenegro replied: "I'm frank, if that possibility were to happen, it wouldn't bother the government in the slightest.
"The government needs the budget to be able to implement its programme," he added, saying of such a move by Chega that “it would show a game” that nobody would understand.
Montenegro took the opportunity offered by the SIC interview, which was conducted by the journalist Maria João Avillez, to stress that, when he stops being prime minister, he does not intend to continue in politics.
"What I'm doing will be my last contribution to politics; I don't want to do anything else," he said. "I'm here with total detachment and I want the country to know this, I won't be anything else in politics after being prime minister."
He described himself as “a transformer” and “a politician from top to bottom” as opposed to being a technician or technocrat.
Asked if it is possible to undertake the reforms that he wants with a parliament as fragmented as the current one, Montenegro replied that in Portugal's political system "not everything depends on parliament" where getting things done is concerned.
"The government governs; the government has a very broad area of intervention and decision and that's what I'm going to do," he said. "I have a lot of respect for the other sovereign bodies, particularly the Assembly of the Republic... but I don't govern thinking about parliament, I don't govern thinking about what the parties in parliament might say about my decisions, I govern thinking about the people."
The prime minister said that this was the expectation of those who voted for the Democratic Alliance (AD) coalition that he led into the legislative elections earlier this year and argued that, depending on the results achieved by the government, they could withdraw or reinforce their vote in the next elections, which he hopes will not be until 2028.
"The electorate is very intelligent," he said. "I think the country is realising the government and the prime minister it has."
SMA/ARO // ARO.
Lusa
