Augusto Santos Silva reaffirmed his role as the PS’s voice of conscience against “Populism and demagogues”. This Monday he went to Batalha, where the Conference of Socialist Parliamentarians is taking place, to point out to the deputies of the majority what are the “emergencies” that are put to their work. Among the three groups that he has pointed out as needing special attention are those who live in a more disadvantaged social situation and, for that reason, are “easy prey of demagogues and populisms”.
The socialist who is also president of the Assembly of the Republic -and has been criticized by Chega for his performance in that position- warned the socialist deputies of the risk of the current social and political context. “We should have special attentionbecause of the circumstances they currently live in, because of citizens who live on the threshold of poverty, who feel insecure in their neighborhoods and jobs and also with the war situation and who can be easy prey for demagoguery and populism. We have to fight this fight”, exhorted Santos Silva.
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Santos Silva warns about “prey” of populism
And he even took the examples of Sweden (where the nationalist and anti-immigration Swedish Democrats rank second, according to preliminary results) and Italy to argue that “only the democratic left can make this fight.” Following the reasoning, he also shoots to the right saying that “well you can wait sitting down” who expects the right to “fight extremism”.
After António Costa was with the parliamentary group giving advice on how to use the absolute majority in current times, it was Santos Silva’s turn to add what that use should be used for. At the beginning of the intervention he had already made an allusion, in a very indirect and not to mention never enoughto what his role as president of the Assembly of the Republic has been, swearing that “he scrupulously fulfills his regimental obligations: “I do no more or less than that.”
The statement responds to the wave of criticism from Chega’s deputies at the end of the previous legislative session, with the parliamentary group even leaving the plenary session in protest, after Santos Silva admonished André Ventura for an anti-immigrant speech.
And it was in this same line of reasoning that he even left a warning to Chega, saying that, in Parliament, “the political debate lives and develops in respect of democratic values” and that “if any deputy does not understand this, time will take care of making him understand.”.
It is in this context that, when listing the emergencies and before coming to the idea of “easy prey”, he also immediately listed the need for the PS not to forget its own electorate, which he described as “the popular media ”. class” that wants “a Portugal well integrated into Europe, a democratic and free country that foreigners welcome those who demand it”.
The third group for which he requested socialist attention is that of young people and he concluded the speech by asking the deputies not to “waste time on what they do not deserve” and to focus “on these emergencies and the advancement of the strategic agenda of the PS.
Before arriving at this list of priorities, Augusto Santos Silva had already warned the deputies of the “unique conditions” that the PS has to “fulfill the mandate” received in the elections of January this year. To which he associates an “enormous trust that people place in the secretary general and the prime minister.”
Source: Observadora
