Former PSD parliamentary leader Paulo Mota Pinto accused the government today of “insufficiency of reformist proposals” and considered that there has been a “management of daily life”, arguing that AD should propose reforms even without a majority in parliament.
© Lusa
19/09/2026
by
Lusa
Na panel on “Reforming the Country” of the inaugural conference of the Progress Institute – which shared with the former governor of Banco de Portugal Mário Centeno – Paulo Mota Pinto assumed that it is currently difficult to pass reforms in parliament because “there is not even a majority that supports the government”.
“ But that does not excuse the government from proposing them and confronting the opposition with its responsibility. Taking on an attitude of daily management is something that is not a reformist attitude”, he criticized.
Questioned whether he agreed with the recent words of the former Prime Minister of the PSD Pedro Passos Coelho who argued that the current government should follow the reformist tradition of the party, the former leader and social-democratic parliamentary leader replied: “Yes, I agree with that”.
“ I agree that there has been a lack of reformist proposals. There was work reform that was not achieved, but I think the government should do more in this direction”, he insisted.
Paulo Mota Pinto also recalled the period in which he was the director of the former leader of PSD Rui Rio and António Costa led the Government of the PS.
“ I was part of the leadership of a party that proposed a pact for justice, proposed a set of reforms, but there was an absolute majority at the time of the Socialist Party and it was not possible to do anything, or very little”, he pointed out.
Presided by the deputy of PS Miguel Costa Matos, the Progress Institute was launched in late August and brings together progressives from the center to the left, with the aim of being a “test tube” to think and test public policies, through pilot experiments on the ground.
Today, at the inaugural conference that took place at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, there were also names such as the former ministers of the PS Maria Manuel Leitão Marques, Eduardo Cabrita, Ana Catarina Mendes or the former candidate the President of the Republic Ana Gomes, the socialists Álvaro Beauty or Pedro Costa and the deputy António Mendonça Mendes (PS) and Paulo Muacho (Free).
Paulo Mota Pinto served as president of the Bureau of Congress and National Council of the PSD throughout the leadership of Rui Rio (2018-2022), as vice president of the PSD under the leadership of Manuela Ferreira Leite and was a deputy in the XI and XII legislatures, in addition to the current one.
In April 2022, (when Rio was already right, but Luís Montenegro had not yet been elected president of the PSD), Mota Pinto was a single candidate for social-democratic parliamentary leadership,
Less than three months later, on June 30, 2022, a day before the start of the PSD Congress that consecrated the new leadership, Paulo Mota Pinto announced that he would call early elections to the head of the bench for having been informed by Luís Montenegro that he intended to change the leadership of the parliamentary group.