“No government instability will result from these local elections. I mean it with all the letters. No national political consequences will come from the result of the local elections”, said Prime Minister Passos Coelho, also leader of the PSD, at the Festa do Pontal, this Friday night on the Calçadão de Quarteira.
Despite considering the victory in the Autárquicas and the maintenance of the presidency of the National Association of Municipalities as the PSD's "design" in the September 29 elections, Passos made a point of saying that elections and maintenance of the Government are "entirely different things."
Whatever the result, "there will be no moods within the Government" as to the work that has to be done, stressed the PSD leader, with all the social-democratic candidates for the Chambers of the Algarve profiled behind him on the stage.
«No one takes it for granted that the crisis is over», warned Passos, despite stressing that the performance of the Portuguese economy in the second quarter showed that it is «on the right path».
The prime minister also spoke of the difficulties that the Portuguese have been facing with the austerity measures and the doubts that have arisen: «when the difficulties are great, people want to know if we don't get lost in the difficulties, when we choose a path to follow, the people want to be sure that the path we are following is not a tangle of indecisions».
However, he stressed, the Portuguese economy had one of the best macroeconomic performances in European terms, all thanks to the Government's ability to "keep the course" and be "patient and persistent".
The prime minister also defended the course traced by his government, using metaphors linked to the sea: “those who go to sea thinking that they can land anywhere has a high probability of being lost. Whoever faces the sea, as the Portuguese did in the past, knowing where he wants to go, can go through many storms and difficulties, he knows he will reach his destination, because he knows where he wants to go».
As for the sacrifices of the Portuguese, Passos Coelho admitted that «it was difficult for almost everyone, but it is important today to praise the collective effort that has represented for Portugal, from an external point of view, the principle of a new credibility that gives confidence to those who are today start your life in Portugal».
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