António Costa, Catarina Martins and Jerónimo de Sousa signed an agreement to form a geringonça government. How many years late was this gesture?
We were children, teenagers and young adults when we saw Mr. Sócrates on camera asking for external help. Our attentive eyes showed that the Prime Minister was quite concerned about the angle from which he appeared on camera: “Am I okay like this, or am I better off like this?”, the ease with which he conveyed to the country that we were officially bankrupt and were asking for help from abroad.
Socrates left the scene in grand style, heading to Paris to study, leaving his legacy and signed commitments to the gentlemen who followed.
Portugal, stripped of its clothes, heard the bad news from the new government, which had to take some very unpopular measures to remove us from the external assistance program as quickly as possible and fulfill the commitments it had signed.
he news that reached us in mid-2013/2014 was that the former Prime Minister was involved in a major corruption scheme, with several tentacles, and was even arrested in 2014 when he returned to Portugal.
With so many sacrifices to get out of that situation, Portugal managed to leave the foreign aid program in 2014. In the 2015 elections, the Portuguese understood that now that we were once again in control of ourselves, we had the conditions to rise from the ashes and see what the free government that could effectively progress economically would do now.
his confidence was reflected after the elections, in which the PSD/CDS government won again. However, it won with a relative majority… António Costa’s ambition was greater than his consideration for the will expressed at the polls, and certainly less than his prejudice in forming a government with followers of the ideology that has killed the most people in the world: communism. Being an ally of the communists would be unthinkable with Mário Soares’ PS.
António Costa, Catarina Martins, Jerónimo de Sousa and Heloísa Apolónia signed an agreement to overthrow the newly elected government and form a geringonça government. How many years late was this gesture?
After this, the Socialist propaganda machine did its job: They did not create any misery. That was the others, the bad ones, the infamous ones.
The new Social Democratic leader even seemed to be a facilitator of this government.
New political forces emerged from this inaction: IL and CH, with a discourse much more geared towards young people, much more transparent, direct communication and committed to telling their truth, each in their own way quickly achieved parliamentary representation. It was the young people, and those who had not forgotten the recent past, who elected them.
The PS turned lies into truth. They changed the facts but changed strategies: under António Costa we recorded the biggest increase in indirect taxes ever.
In fact, the tax burden in Portugal reached its record with António Costa representing 36.4% of GDP in 2023.
Someone had to pay for luxuries like the renationalization of TAP, which incidentally cost taxpayers a modest 3.2 billion euros (only to end up in reprivatization again).
Socialist illusionism assures us that in countries that liberals admire, tax burdens are higher. This is factual, but incomplete. They conveniently omit the fact that in countries that liberals admire, salaries are higher. And “fiscal effort” is a term that will never be explained to you. Well, here we are the 5th country in the European Union with the highest tax effort.
And where do our taxes go? If we need a doctor, we have to go to a private doctor. And that is why, with António Costa’s absolute majority, 3.6 million Portuguese people, in addition to paying into the National Health Service, now also pay for health insurance.
We are the most qualified generation ever, but 75% of young people up to the age of 35 earn up to €1000 net, perhaps that is why 30% of young Portuguese people are already living abroad.
We are also the most informed and least isolated generation in the world. Low-cost airlines have done us a huge favor by seeing what is happening abroad. The Internet has done us a huge favor by bringing us ideas that work and new trends from abroad. Maybe that is why they want to control it so much.
We are the generation that cannot afford houses, because there are none, thanks to the artificial barriers that the State creates for the construction and renovation of properties.
We are the generation that cannot enjoy an inherited house without the left thinking that we should tax this.
They call us populists, they try to terrorize us with the dangers of being free. They try to tell us how to think.
It’s us. The children and young people of 2015 who have grown up and are asking the left to settle accounts with the misery to which they condemned us.