António Pedro Santos / LUSA
Luís Montenegro and Hugo Soares
“Don’t get carried away.” Prime Minister forgot, for a moment, that Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was president of the PSD.
The PSD president defended that “the people and the country” are with the Government and his party, asking everyone not to “let themselves be carried away” by those who “pick up the megaphone and take to the streets”.
At the Christmas dinner of the PSD parliamentary group, the Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, he never directly referred to last Thursday’s, but left messages to the most left-wing parties and even the PS, questioning whether they have the representation they think they have.
“You can be confident, The people are with the PSD, the people are with this Governmentthe people are with the majority of PSD mayors in Portugal, have no doubt about that. Don’t be shy, Don’t let yourself be led by those who pick up the megaphone and take to the streets, thinking that they have that representation, because they don’t have”, he stated, at a dinner that brought together deputies, party officials and members of the Government.
Montenegro criticized the parties that, “with an extraordinary arrogance, they presume to speak on behalf of the Portuguese, always saying that ‘the Portuguese think this, because the Portuguese think that’”.
“And then the Portuguese speak out and have a deputy in the Assembly of the Republic, has three deputies in the Assembly of the Republic. The Portuguese don’t think anything of what they say they think”, he said, in an apparent reference to BE e PCP.
The social democratic leader also implicitly criticized the PS.
“And the others, who not long ago had an absolute majority, and now have 58 deputies, and don’t want to learn with what the people told them, and they continue to speak to us as if they still had the majority representation of the people, and they have the nerve to say how arrogant we are. No, we have the democratic humanity to respect the one who is the true sovereign, which is the people”, he stated.
“Favors” from the president
The Prime Minister also commented that “never has any President of the Republic who was president of the PSD done any favor to the party” and considered that Luís Marques Mendes “is by far” the best prepared for the position.
Luís Montenegro took stock of the legislative and municipal victories in the last year, remembering that the party won the presidency of the National Association of Parishes and the National Association of Municipalities.
“In fact There are already beginning to be more presidencies, but now we are still missing one in our political area… we are not lacking”, he said, correcting himself, since the current President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, was president of the PSD.
Montenegro praised the former PSD president Brands Mendes – candidate for Belém supported by the Social Democrats and the CDS-PP – as “the most qualified, the most experienced and who has already shown that he is by far – not a little, not a little – the most prepared candidate to be President of the Republic”.
“We are comfortable, because we don’t say it because he is from our political area or even from our party, if anyone suffered Sunday after Sunday for a long time, it was us”, he said, referring to Marques Mendes’ weekly comments on SIC over the last decade.
The Prime Minister made a point of highlighting the independence of the two heads of state who were leaders of the PSD, such as Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Cavaco Silva.
“Our previous PSD presidents have the power to exercise the highest judiciary in the nation with high criteria of independence. No President of the Republic who was president of the PSD has ever done any political favor to the PSD”, he stated.
