The general secretary of the Socialist Party has accused the government of overseeing the largest destruction of jobs for years and says he considers it "very serious" that the Prime Minister does not know, or does not care that he is misleading the public with his unemployment figures.
"In recent years we have lived through the greatest destruction of jobs seen for ages with 320,000 jobs lost," said António Costa.
Costa, who was speaking to journalists this weekend during a visit to Odemira, accused the Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho of deceit, "the 160,000 jobs created recently have been in employment schemes, i.e they are subsidised jobs which have a statistical impact but have had little impact on the effective creation of jobs."
Costa noted that 90% of these employment contracts only 20% have been converted into real jobs.
According to Costa, "the way the Prime Minister systematically plays with the numbers and deceives people clearly shows a lack of confidence."
"And that's why we have not been able to mobilise the country, because no one mobilises a country by cheating people, you mobilise a country by speaking the truth," he said, arguing that "it is essential to restore confidence and the first step to restore confidence is to have a political debate about the data and about the truth."
According to António Costa, "people know very well what has happened in Portugal in the last four years, they well know how this government boasted and bragged about going above and beyond the obligations imposed by the Troika."
"What people well know is that the situation we live in today results not only from the Troika’s austerity policy but by the exaggeration of this policy by this government."
"It is unfortunate that the government has not learned from its mistakes and that it now is proposing more of the same to the public - keep the cuts, increase taxes and impose new cuts in pensions of more than €600 million."
"What people tell us today, people we listen to on the street, is the following: we need to change this policy and we need to restore confidence in the country."
