PS European candidate Francisco Assis visted the Algarve today and criticised the "triumphalist tone" of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho’s Sunday evening announcement that Portugal would leave the bailout programme with a clean break.
"The news was nothing that surprised me, we knew long ago that this was going to happen. What I would like to emphasise was the triumphalist tone of the Prime Minister which was at variance with the reality of national life," said Assis, who today visited the market of Olhão and local factories in a pre-campaign walkabout for the European elections May 25th.
The Socialist candidate said that "the truth is that the country is worse today than it was three years ago," the government has "destroyed a significant part of the economic fabric, and there are very serious social problems" and all this was done "at the expense of a burgeoning tax revenue and a brutal decline in yields of specific sectors of Portuguese society."
"There has been no reform of the state, there has been no structural change and the economic data today is no better than three years ago. This means that the policy was wrong,” said the PS candidate who was accompanied by leaders of the Federation of Socialists in the Algarve and the former mayor.
"What we are discussing in this election are the future prospects for the country, whether or not we continue to be subjected to a policy of brutal austerity, with very negative consequences for the economy and for the social balance of the country," said Assis who thinks the national economic situation is currently based on "statements that are absolutely fallible, because deep down the situation has not changed."
