“I can’t understand”. Centennial criticism Marcelo and Cavaco praise

“ Pwe then hate to do all the reforms we want, but if the state of political stability is this, we are not going anywhere and there is a question that I am leaving, the President of the Republic has already spoken about: I cannot understand how to give possession to governments that have no parliamentary support”, he criticized.

Mário Centeno intervened this afternoon at the first conference of the Progress Institute, which takes place in Lisbon, and focused on his intervention on the issue of stability, recalling the six interrupted legislatures that Portugal had in the 21st century.

For the former governor of Banco de Portugal, the then President of the Cavaco Silva Republic demanded, in 2015, a written agreement to give possession to the executive led by António Costa – who reputed “as the most reformist government in recent history of the country” – was “probably one of the greatest contributions he could have made in his long political career for democracy in Portugal”.

“ And we should have realized, at that time, that looking at a government that has no parliamentary support, that did not have a single meeting that is known to be able to have parliamentary support, and then to ask for reforms?”, he condemned, in a reference to the current executive led by Luís Montenegro, to which the former President of the Republic Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa gave office.

Speaking at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Mário Centeno resorted to music to make a comparison: “It’s the same as standing here and asking me to sing in an opera area. It will not work.”.

“ And I think it is a martyrdom for everyone, particularly for those in the government, to look at us and ask: ‘Come on!’ But there's no way. The country does not deserve it, the country cannot have such legislatures. The country cannot have legislatures that are interrupted because it has failed a law in Parliament”, he said.

For António Costa’s former minister, “a legislature that is interrupted is the link between the vote and the decision that is interrupted” and is the “essential of democracy that stops”.

Turning to the period in which he assumed governing functions, Centeno said that it was stability that allowed “progress and growth” that he considered that the country had between 2016 and 2019, which he sees as an “exception in the absolutely dramatic and chaotic desert that was politics in Portugal”.

“ Since 2024, budgetary policy has been pro-cyclical. A procyclical policy enlivens our soul and makes us fall at the first moment. And that moment the Prime Minister said the day before yesterday that he arrived, and that he does not control, because if there is an international crisis he does not control”, he said, in a reference to the current situation generated by the war.

However, for the former Finance Minister, national policies control countries, insisting that for progress to come, governments must prepare themselves.

“ Productivity also requires a lot of preparation. And it requires that these ingredients that I have spoken of, qualifications, financial and political stability, are real. And it is not to form political stability by decree. Nope. It is putting the 230 people who have been elected Members to generate this stability in the place where it has to be generated, which is in the Assembly of the Republic”, he appealed.