The Executive should ask the President of the Republic to renew the state of emergency this Thursday, with parliamentary discussion taking place on Friday and the Head of State should speak to the country later.
The opinion is of commentator Luís Marques Mendes who also said that he thinks that confinement at the weekend should not be maintained after 11:59 pm on Sunday, November 22.
The reason is purely political, from the perspective of the political commentator, who spoke this evening at SIC, during his weekly space for political comment: the PCP congress will take place in two weeks.
“I think it will be for a political reason [que se vai acabar com os confinamentos de fim-de-semana], is that in two weeks the PCP has its congress. In order not to give the idea that there are two weights and two measures – the country is confined but a congress is running – this confinement will remain only for these two weeks ”, said the former PSD deputy.
Marques Mendes also said that the PCP would benefit if “it took the decision to postpone its congress, as BE did”.
As for the measures taken by the Executive under the state of emergency, Marques Mendes said that it will be necessary to wait, but stressed that the Government could clarify “in the coming days” whether it will be possible to circulate, or not, in the country or between municipalities, at Christmas.
The Government should also take advantage of the next state of emergency to “differentiate” the rules in the councils, because not everyone has the same levels of contagion. According to the commentator, this measure was promised by the Government “twice” and until now, it has not been fulfilled.
For Marques Mendes, this is part of a range of “failures” of the Government in the management of the pandemic. The former PSD deputy said that “there are a few flaws in all of us”, but he focused the criticisms on the Government’s actions, with the most serious flaws being those related to “planning, lack of effectiveness of decisions and decisions taken late and at bad times ”. “There is no measure that is taken and that is not then reviewed”, he stressed.
The commentator also pointed the finger at the number of exceptions to the rules that the Government imposes to control the pandemic. “The Government has taken several measures for several counties in the country, but they are more exceptions than the rules. It can’t be, ”he said.
This at a time when “the pandemic is not controlled in Portugal”. According to the graphs that the commentator presented tonight about the evolution of the pandemic in the last 14 days, “today we are worse than we were five weeks ago”. “Portugal is the tenth worst in the European Union (EU) with more cases per 100 thousand inhabitants. We are above the EU average for the past 14 days. It shows well that late decisions do not give the results expected, unlike Germany, Belgium and Spain ”, said Marques Mendes.
“The mood is not good and people are disgusted by some bad decisions. There is no political consensus as there was in the first phase of the pandemic. Today we start to have the first signs of breaking social cohesion – just think about this weekend’s demonstrations. And there is a lack of political leadership, the Government has failed over the several days ”, he stressed.
There was also a word for the catering sector. Marques Mendes considered that the Government has “tried to help the restoration, but it was good that the Government still considered some fiscal measures” in the State Budget for 2021.
Marques Mendes revealed that Portugal should start receiving the 11.5 million doses of vaccines – both the Astrazeneca vaccine and the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine – from the end of January and beginning of February 2021.
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