This Saturday, the President of the Republic defended the need to “visualize an alternative” in order to maintain sanity in the political system, adding that “only a very strong opposition” allows “regime agreements.”
Speaking at the “Portugal XXI: Country of the Future” meeting held today at the Casa das Histórias Paula Rego in Cascais, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa dwelled on the challenges facing Portugal and mentioned “the much debated issue of institutional conditions for the economic”.
“There are institutional conditions that are being acquired in Portugal: governmental and parliamentary stability for four years, four and a half years. It should be in Europe, as far as I remember, the only country with an absolute majority of the party”, said the head of state, before noting that this majority also exists in Greece “thanks to the electoral system”.
However, Marcelo emphasized that this absolute majority is “not enough”: “The sanity of the system is something more: it has an alternative or visualizes an alternative that alone allows it, namely, regime agreements.”
“Only a very strong opposition is strong enough to make agreements with the regime. Otherwise, she doesn’t do it: her cycles are so small, so small, so short, so short, that she can’t make agreements with the regime. They are always unreliable.” , he said.
Listing topics for regime agreements, Marcelo Rebelo de Souza said that “there are some that are easy to do: the energy transition is pretty much simple, the digital transition is very simple, health care is more difficult, welfare is more difficult, though easier than health” .
“So there are some areas where I no longer rely on education, hoping that ideological divisions over qualifications will be bridged,” he said.
The President of the Republic believed that “it is necessary to have a constant desire for renewal both on the part of political, economic and social partners, which are very outdated.”
“The best evidence of moral obsolescence is that along with this, other quasi-economic and social partners were born, as well as quasi-political partners, occupying part of the space or supplementing part of the space,” he stressed.
However, Marcelo emphasized that “Portugal has an advantage over other European countries” given that the country “manages to integrate populism”, which he says is “good”.
“So far, he manages to integrate, with more or less difficulty, the inorganic and populist movements that emerged in 2018, but this depends on the capabilities of the political partners, economic and social partners: they unite only if they have the flexibility to do so, and if the system has a form,” he said.
In a speech that lasted about 30 minutes, Marcelo Rebelo de Souza also addressed the problem of “the viability of the democratic system”, which, according to him, “passes, for example, through the power of the media”.
“The media, which are on the verge of economic and financial instability, because the market is small, because there were crises A, B, C, D, is a factor that weakens the political system,” he stressed.
