Passos Coelho, prime minister and president of the Social Democratic party, yesterday defended the need for “a politically unambiguous result” in this autumn’s general election as he stressed the importance of stability in government.
In an address to the party faithful at the annual Festa do Pontal rally in Quarteira, Passos Coelho made the curious comment that he is looking for a result that allows him to govern to solve people’s problems and not go looking for ways of how to solve the government's problems.
A socialist government would be an additional problem for the Portuguese people, according to the PM who for the first time shared the stage with Paulo Portas, his CDS 'partner' who in 2013 famously forced his way into the deputy Prime Minister's job by threatening to break up the coalition if he did not get his own way.
As for the PM's greatest threat, he accused the socialist leader António Costa of 'threatening stability in the country' when meaning 'threatening the stability of his coalition leadership.'
With socialist leader Costa ahead in the polls the coalition is getting increasingly desperate to discredit the opposition which has plenty of ammunition including the fiddled unemployment figures, the rise in borrowings and the increase in the population's poverty after four years of austerity which many point out has failed to produce anywhere near the expected results.
Before the PM’s speech, the head of the communist party Jerónimo de Sousa said the PM will be up to his usual tricks and duplicity over the government’s performance over the past four years.
In a speech to communist party members in Monte Gordo, Jerónimo de Sousa said Passos Coelho says he has "saved the country from bankruptcy and calling in the Troika was of course all the fault of the last government under José Sócrates, and that only now is the country on track with economic growth.”
Jerónimo de Sousa added that "there can be no more striking example of the coalition’s policy than the emigration of 500,000, half a million Portuguese, particularly young graduates, able and willing to serve their country but who have gone to live abroad."
The parliamentary leader of the Left Bloc, Pedro Filipe Soares, said the coalition leaders’ speeches in Quarteira were "hugely impudent", arguing that they were "the harbinger of an unambiguous defeat."
"The speeches from Portas and Coelho had a nerve, the leaders seem to have forgotten their poor management over the last four years and sought to draw a veil over their failings."
For Pedro Filipe Soares, it was "a deception" for the PSD/CDS coalition leaders to talk of stability when it was them that had created the most instability in people's lives.
Passos Coelho can return to his holiday in Manta Rota secure in the knowledge that his speech did not deviate from the party line that the past is the past and anything that has ever gone wrong was the socialists’ fault.
This theme was echoed by Paulo Portas who said that "we have to heal the wounds of austerity caused by others."
