Rui Rio was speaking on Sunday in Madeira, at the close of the congress of the regional PSD in Funchal, at which Miguel Albuquerque was re-elected president.
“The big mistake is when they sell us an economic situation of almost an economic miracle and then we all discover that we cannot do this because they have no means,” Rio told his audience, in a reference to the tight purse strings that the government is keeping, despite saying that austerity is in the past.
The PSD leader said that the government’s problem is that it “sells illusions” and, like anyone who does that, “sooner or later reaps discontent in the form of strikes” or other forms of protest.
He also said that the government acts “to please at the moment” and “has no economic strategy” as well as presiding over the “degradation of public services” since it took office in late 2015.
“It has no strategy of economic growth, because it was a government that over all these years was primarily concerned with taking on all the clearances that the economic situation allowed and distributing according to the list of demands made by the Communist Party, made by the Left Block,” he said, referring to the two main other parties that provide the minority government’s support base in parliament.
Rio stressed that Portugal had had the worst economic growth in the European Union in the last four years, yet undertaken no structural reforms.
“They did nothing for private investment, they lowered public investment, they undermined the savings rate, they worsened the indebtedness of households, they have achieved the largest tax burden in the history of Portugal,” he said.
On the other hand, he went on, “they have degraded public services to a level that is inadmissible in any circumstance.” That, he argued, indicates that austerity is not over.