Portugal’s Prime Minister has reminded his colleagues that elections are not won abroad, they are won at home.
Pedro Passos Coelho wants his top team of ministers to cut foreign travel ‘in view of the elections’ next year while resigning himself to a further coalition in order to fend off the threat of a socialist victory, the alternative being ‘political suicide.’
Passos Coelho and Paulo Portas "are doomed to compete together” and the PM wants his ministerial team out there pressing the flesh in Portugal, not flying around the world on expensive jaunts.
Coelho will not exactly be enamoured by the news that the Education Minister is budgeting to spend a further €1.1 million in travel and accommodation in 2015.
Crato’s 2014 business trips have been widely criticised in the press and by his colleagues, the highlight being a trip to Italy for a meeting on telecommunications just as the teachers’ placement crisis became critical, an indication of his unerring lack of grasp of any ambient political mood.
Crato has travelled 160,000 kilometers this year to Brazil, China and Mexico, among other countries in a ministerial role that should be largely home based.
Meantime, thousands of Portuguese students have quit Portugal deciding to engage in higher education outside their home country, taking advantage of free or sponsored courses arranged by a growing number of companies that help in the registration process at universities.
