It is another chapter in recent history about the times when troika It was in Portugal, written by those who lived it. Pedro Passos Coelho revealed that he tried to obtain an agreement from the Central Bloc with the then leader of the PS, António José Seguro, during the “irrevocable crisis” and even before reaching an agreement with Paulo Portas for the continuity of the PSD / coalition government. CDS. . In the book troika Time Diplomacy, by Luís Almeida Sampaio —part of which the Observer is pre-publishing here—, the former prime minister tells his version of the greatest crisis of the right-wing government in the preface of the work.
The then leader of the PSD had scheduled a trip to Berlin and decided to go anyway, to at least show the solidity of his leadership – since that of the Government was at stake after Paulo Portas, CDS leader and coalition partner , announced that he was asking for his resignation and that it was “irrevocable”. In the German capital, Passos Coelho “had not yet obtained a guarantee that the second party of the coalition would remain in government, despite the firm intention” of Paulo Portas to “come to leave the Government”.
The former prime minister says that “that morning he didn’t even know whether or not he would have a government the next day.” Passos Coelho believed that only the PSD “could lead the country’s government in that parliamentary framework” and that the other alternative, “holding elections, in that context would at least mean having to ask for a new bailout.” — Passos writes anyway, with an exclamation mark, the hypothesis of a new rescue.
The former leader of the PSD was then left with a “very clear notion of what was at stake” and sought that the PS “could support the Government’s efforts in Parliament to close the adjustment program.” To do this, Passos Coelho asked the then president of the commission, Durão Barroso, and the leader of the Socialists in the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, to help convince Seguro to accept an agreement with his government.
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Source: Observadora
