Cavaco invites Costa to resign in a devastating speech for the socialists: they are “liars” and “incompetent”

Aníbal Cavaco Silva went to the 3rd Meeting of Social Democrat Mayors, this Saturday, in Lisbon, to say that Luís Montenegro is better prepared than he was in 1985 to be Prime Minister and to deliver the most violent and devastating speech ever made by this former President of the Republic did in relation to a Government: he said that socialist power (and António Costa) was “incompetent”, “liar”, who put the country on the “path of political degradation” and he ended up appealing to the prime minister to have a “conscience strike” and present his resignation. Cavaco left no stone unturned. “Never has a government sunk so low”he accused when he mentioned the TAP dossier.

The qualifiers used by Cavaco – in a language of unusual violence in a former President who had such institutionalist mandates – are unprecedented in a man that Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, in a comment a few years ago, classified as a “herbivore” PR in the interpretation of the presidential powers. “There are two areas in which socialist governance specializes: lies and trickery”, shot now Cavaco. The phrases are from a carnivorous former President: “There was practically not a day when it was not demonstrated that the Government is lying”described Cavaco about the TAP process. “Can you still believe in a government that spends the day lying?”he questioned.

Although the tremendous nature of the entire intervention to PSD mayors – or to the country – called for a dissolution of Belém, as protocol dictates that a former President does not criticize or address the Head of State in office, Cavaco called for the departure of the prime minister. minister by his own foot:

“In principle, the current legislature ends in 2026, but sometimes, the prime ministers, as a result of a reflection on the situation in the country, after a relapse of conscience, decide to present the resignation and give way to early elections”said Cavaco Silva midway through his 51-minute speech. “That’s what happened in March 2011”, needed. That’s when Socrates left.

Almost 20 years ago, when he wrote the text of “Má Moeda” in Expresso, which contributed to the fall of the Government and the PSD/CDS majority of Pedro Santana Lopes, Cavaco Silva was light years away from the crude accusations he made this Saturday to António Costa, the Socialist Party and the Government. In his speech, to be heard in São Bento, but also in Belém, the former President cited the Constitution to imply that it might be at stake to ensure the regular functioning of institutions – a formula that allows the resignation of the Prime Minister – when said that the political, economic and social “degradation” that we are experiencing are “are the result of a prime minister who has lost authority and does not carry out the powers that the Constitution defines”.

Then, he quoted the constitutional text: “To direct the general policy of the Government, coordinating and guiding the action of all the ministers”. If Costa does not direct or coordinate the action of his ministers, the following barb, sharp but subliminal, seems directed at Marcelo: “Skills that all political analysts seem to have forgotten”. Not only the analysts, but the chief analyst, who with this cue could trigger the atomic bomb.

Cavaco’s entire speech, which describes the country’s situation as hell, leads to one conclusion: there must be early elections. The harshness of criticism of the Government is only equivalent to praise for Luís Montenegro and its capacity to govern and to recover the 8% or 9% that it lacks to have the same result that the PS had in the last legislative elections.

“The PSD and its leadership have been, and rightly, denouncing mistakes, abuses of power, lies, and the Government’s lack of political ethics and lack of sense of state”pointed out Cavaco, leveraging Montenegro while denouncing Costa. “The PSD has presented alternatives that make it possible to reverse the economic policy and improve the lives of the Portuguese”said the former leader of the party for a decade, to point out that “the statement that the PSD has not presented alternative policies to socialist power is false”.

In update