The first topic launched for this Sunday night’s presidential debate, on TVI, focused on the general strike scheduled for December 11th and the “current problems in the labor market” that the PSD and CDS-PP Government’s labor package aims to “solve”. But Luís Marques Mendes preferred to start by confronting João Cotrim de Figueiredo with the statements that the candidate supported by the Liberal Initiative made to the Express.
“Two weeks ago, I was the victim of a very ugly personal attack. João Cotrim de Figueiredo said that I, or people close to me, pressured him to give up his candidacy. It is a very serious and very serious accusation”said the former PSD leader, who then asked “two very simple questions”.
“When did I speak to you and pressure you to give up? Who were the people who, in my name, pressured you to give up? Accusations of this gravity are not made without presenting evidence.”, he stressed.
“I’m glad you’re going to attack, so I can respond in kind”, Cotrim de Figueiredo immediately retorted, adding that he “never said that Luís Marques Mendes” had “contacted” him: “I never mentioned your name”.
Debate in full
“Prominent supporters, who I assumed were part of your candidacy, pressured me to drop out of the campaign”he reiterated.
“In recent weeks, there have been accusations from Gouveia e Melo, who says he was pressured by the Government not to move forward. About this, Luís Marques Mendes said nothing”the liberal candidate also emphasized.
“I believe the matter is closed. For me, I am responding to things that I have already publicly responded to”, he concluded.The topic of pressure was also highlighted in the debate between Cotrim de Figueiredo and Jorge Pinto. The former leader of the Liberal Initiative then reiterated that he had been pressured by “supporters” of Marques Mendes who felt “free” to “intimidate” him.
“You don’t make accusations of this gravity in the light way you did. If I didn’t raise this issue, I wouldn’t be a person of good character.. Anyone who doesn’t feel that way is not the son of good people. I draw the following conclusion: João Cotrim de Figueiredo made unfounded accusations. There is no evidence, there is no basis”, Marques Mendes would go on to say.
“I think this is extremely frivolous for anyone who wants to be president of the Republic. Even his voters don’t like it. I know this is difficult for him.”
“I think you behave like a kind of embarrassed André Ventura and this does not recommend you for president of the Republic, it even disqualifies you. As we saw in this episode, your word is not to be taken into account”, he accused.
“What the Portuguese expect from the President of the Republic, beyond words, is transparency. I know he will launch a book in which summarizes his time in Government in five pages. Do you have something to hide?”, Cotrim then countered.
Young people, the State Council and consensus
Asked, then, if he fears that the useful vote will end up favoring candidacies like that of the social-democratic opponent, with a longer political experience, Cotrim de Figueiredo replied: “I know I’m different. I don’t have the political career of Marques Mendes, I have a six-year career”.
He stated, however, that he had a “more airy” perspective, criticizing the proposal, by Marques Mendes, to introduce a young person into the Council of State, the consultative body of the Presidency of the Republic.
“I don’t think that matters such as including a young person in the State Council highlight youth. In my case, it would always be with youth. These signs would be important, but they are not what solves problems”.
“I’ve seen him talk less about consensus and more about ambition and growth. I’m the candidate who talks the most about economic growth. I’ve done it all my life and have continued to do so as a politician”, advocated Cotrim.
“I continue to defend that consensus is needed and I make this concrete: in the area of justice, in the area of combating corruption, to combat the slowness of justice, especially in criminal justice and in the economic area, to combat the idea of one justice for the rich and another for the poor”returned Marques Mendes.“Things are not going well at the Public Ministry and there is some corporatism”, admitted Luís Marques Mendes.
Still according to the candidate supported by the PSD, “a president has to be moderate, but it doesn’t mean being soft, it means being firm”.
“There are problems with housing, student accommodation, there are problems with salaries, in general. I am the first candidate who presented a concrete proposal: a young person for the State Council. I think it is a huge mistake to devalue this proposal. It is the only body that brings together the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition at the same table. Having a young person on the State Council is giving young people an opportunity”, he argued.
“I don’t defend ideas that I don’t believe in. Luís Marques Mendes has been a member of the State Council since 2022, 2003, and even so, with so much importance that the State Council has, we continue to have problems”said, in turn, Cotrim de Figueiredo.
“I’m not devaluing, if people discuss solutions, if it’s a succession of monologues. If you want to be close to youth, it’s not with the symbolism of having a young person on the State Council that this can be resolved”he reinforced.
Marques Mendes would return with the same idea: “The President of the Republic has the right to designate five members of the Council of State. A young person has never been appointed. And I am going to designate a young man. I want to tell you that I have had a lot of contact with young people and everyone greatly values this idea, this commitment”.
Labor market problems
Regarding the new labor package, Marques Mendes emphasizes that it is now necessary to “wait for the law in its final form”. Faced with the idea that he generally agrees, the candidate stressed that “the Government has every legitimacy to carry out this reform”.
“There are issues in the present and in the future that could perhaps justify” the new package, pointed out the candidate supported on the right, remembering “the digital transition, the issues that arise with Artificial Intelligence, teleworking, reconciling work and family life”.
“I think there are reasons to carry out reform (…) It seems to me that a large number of people ask for reforms and then when they appear they don’t want them to be carried out”he concluded.
Cotrim de Figueiredo established a distinction between the roles of the President of the Republic, who does not legislate, and the possibility that candidates for this position have to debate issues: “We have an obligation to make ourselves known.”
In this sense, he stated that “he would enact this labor legislation in the most recent version (…) which is no longer the same as that proposed on July 24th to the permanent council of Concertação Social and which has already been subject to several changes as a result of various contacts with the UGT”.Cotrim de Figueiredo expressed his surprise here that this union center was “quite quick to join the general strike, as well as being the first to raise the possibility of the general strike lasting two days”.
“It caused me some confusion until I realized that there are UGT elections in March”he said, arguing that the decision possibly had to do with the center’s desire to “show itself to be more active (…) or as active as CGTP”.
Regarding the decision to promulgate, he justified it with the need to “make the legislation more flexible [e] When we talk about more flexibility, it’s not about firing more easily or recruiting more easily, it’s about making companies more capable of adapting to a sudden difference in demand in their order book. [quando] current legislation makes this very difficult (…) with companies taking more serious measures such as collective dismissals”.
Coast and Interior
Asked about policies to encourage birth rates and reduce differences in living conditions between the Coast and the Interior, Marques Mendes spoke of “a long process”, which requires work on the initial text.
“The role of a self-respecting President of the Republic who believes that he will truly be elected is: he only speaks out, on this matter as on any other, with the final text and at this moment it is far from being a final text”.
Confronted with the opinion now issued by Silva Peneda, a former PSD minister who said that the union centrals were backed to the wall, Marques Mendes said that his friend and supporter “is not a candidate, so he can say all that”. At this point, Cotrim de Figueiredo recalled that “none of us is president yet”.
The former PSD leader then left two appeals: balance and social dialogue, especially with UGT. He considered in this regard that, unlike the climate of two weeks ago, of great tension and blockage, it is now calm despite a strike: “Government and UGT have already said that after the strike they will continue to negotiate”.
Regarding young people, he devalued the issue of labor laws to argue that the measures that are being prepared in terms of leasing are more important.Returning to accusing Marques Mendes of not revealing whether he would enact the law or not, Cotrim de Figueiredo considered that the new legislation “is contrary to the birth policy that Portugal needs”.
“Making it more difficult for parents of children under 12 to refuse work on weekends or after hours seems to me to be a mistake, making breastfeeding more difficult seems to me to be a mistake and unnecessary”, considered the liberal, adding that in relation to to salaries and the return of young people is misleading people by saying that this is an issue that can be resolved in two or three years: “This is a long process”.
“We have left our economy for too long to be based on a very undynamic model, very unattractive for national and foreign investment, and little generation of qualified and well-paid jobs”.
Regarding the existence of poverty among the Portuguese working class and remembering that only social support allows poverty numbers to be lower, Cotrim de Figueiredo returns to the motto of economic growth as the country’s priority and speaks of “the greatest example of failure of economic policy in the last 30 or 40 years”.
“Anyone who thinks that there is no need to change things and that the country can continue like this is deeply mistaken and is complicit in this state of affairs”, pointed out the liberal candidate, returning to defend that “economic growth is the only way to deal with poverty in the long term”.
Marques Mendes made a point of highlighting a difference between the two on this topic. Assuring that “it is much more ambitious on a social level”. Saying that he has been advocating economic growth of around three percent per year for years, he recalls that “this will take time”.
“In the meantime, poverty is a national problem and must be seen as a national goal, we cannot wait for the market to solve the problem of the elderly, pensioners, retired people, with pensions of 300 or 400 or 500 euros (…) here State intervention is essential”.
Pointing out what he says is a big difference between the two candidates, Marques Mendes says that sensitivity is needed in this matter and not so much belief in the market. Here, he accused Cotrim de Figueiredo of having a tax proposal that, if adopted, “would seriously compromise the country’s social component: education, health, pensioners”.
Asked by his opponent about the cost of this proposal, Marques Mendes spoke of a single tax rate for the IRS, to which the liberal replied: “We haven’t proposed a single tax for about five years, but it’s fine”.
Insisting that it is the idea defended by his opponent, Marques Mendes followed his script by pointing out that this proposal is “a problem of justice” as it taxes “a person who earns 20 thousand euros and another who earns 500 thousand or one million” in the same way.
“Quantifying, UTAO, four or five years ago, in relation to these Liberal Initiative proposals presented by João Cotrim de Figueiredo, which if they went ahead would imply a loss of revenue of three billion euros (…) which would mean cuts in health, education and even social benefits”.
Flaws “in economic reasoning”
The liberal candidate responded that, in cases of despair, he defends “state intervention as much or more than Luís Marques Mendes”. Pointing out the social democrat’s flaws “in economic reasoning”, he recalled that the UTAO argument loses validity when in these years the IRS has already reduced two billion euros. He added that they have no longer proposed the lowest single rate for five years.
He then recalled that “we have some of the most progressive IRS in Europe”, which, he believes, will be the factor that leads young people to leave the country. In this sense, the money that would be lost in tax revenue, he argues, “which is more money in people’s pockets”, would be quickly recovered if new generations of younger workers were kept in the country.
Marques Mendes called Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) to accuse Cotrim de Figueiredo of defending its privatization, which could lead to situations in which important decisions would be taken from Madrid and not Lisbon. Cotrim de Figueiredo took up the topic and argued that yes, but no, that it is the opposite, and took up the issue of TAP, denouncing too much State interventionism in the air carrier’s life.
Regarding CGD, Cotrim de Figueiredo recalled that at a time of problems, “5,600 million euros had to be injected with strict European Union rules to behave like a commercial bank”.
