Portugal’s former Prime Minister, Pedro Passos Coelho, said today the the government’s economic model has failed and asks, "Who puts money into a country run by communists lefties?"
The current leader of the opposition doubts that António Costa’s Socialist Party government can attract investors to generate growth for Portugal as the economic model has failed and that "we should stop pretending we are rich when we are not."
The President of the Social Democrat Party, Pedro Passos Coelho, said that Portugal needs to attract investment in order to generate employment and income, but questioned who would want to put money into a place run by communists and lefties who are inherently anti-capitalist?
Passos Coelho was speaking at a PSD rally in Boticas, Vila Real, and emphasised throughout the need to attract overseas investment as Portugal on its own lacked the investment power and know-how to create jobs and viable businesses.
"We need to work with humility and not to pretend that we are rich and that we do not need anyone else. Knowing that we need others e have to have the humility to go looking for them and to create in Portugal the conditions for them to invest here."
Passos Coelho said the economy is not going well and is growing less than last year, concluding that the "economic model proposed by this Government has failed and that the ideas are exhausted.
The Social Democrat leader said the "government does not want to take risks, does not want to change anything,” and that he was confident that "when the day of judgment comes, people will realise the mistakes made by parliament and will correct things for the future.”
Passos Coelho was speaking to a PSD-supporting audience which happily will help him to draw a veil over the many economic problems hidden away until the Socialists took over.
The situation at Banif Bank which cunningly had been hidden from public view and the desperate mess at Caixa Geral de Depósitos under successive government regimes, but not dealt with by Passos Coelho’s supposedly hard line right-wing approach, are but two of the economic disasters for which the former PM is responsible.
The new current government has suffered from the collapse in exports to Angola, down 50% as the Angolan economy implodes, and the legacy of an economy so constricted with red tape and the costs of doing business that budding entrepreneurs either give up in disgust, leave the country or set up businesses that thrive only by dividing revenue between official and unofficial income streams.
Passos Coelho’s ‘woman scorned’ attitude does him no credit but will be popular with his supporters who easily forget the corruption, theft and government supported enrichment reserved for those VIP in and out of government who had the favour of the PS/CDS-PPD regime.
The former PM also is guilty of foisting the likes of Miguel Relvas and Paulo Portas on an already suspicious electorate, for this he can not be forgiven.
