Sitting with his leg drawn on a blue armchair in the Palace of Belém, the President of the Republic spoke (in a recorded message) for a few minutes at the opening of the RTP’s Pros and Cons program. The day he met with the bank, it was at night that Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa left the toughest message. Full of messages for the post-outbreak and for the Government, which faces a major decision this week (school reopening) and a period of risk (Easter), with especially tight measures.
Marcelo predicts that by the end of April the worst may have passed and that the outbreak will be overcome “until the summer”. “The month of April is decisive”, warned the President, who predicts that the “health suffocation will pass (…) during the month of April”. The challenge, he assumes, “is like no other in the past almost 50 years. It is more than an economic, financial, social crisis. It is, at the same time and before that, the biggest challenge for life and health of the last hundred years, in dimension and, above all, in concentration in time ”. But while recognizing that “it requires unity from everyone” this “it is not uniqueness, nor is it an interruption of democracy ”, warns.
And behold, here comes the first message: in this “convergence in the essentials in the fight” to the health crisis, “different positions and calls for attention fit, of mayors, health professionals, social and political sectors”. And after this crisis, Marcelo says that “naturally” a different path will be followed to face the economic and social effects of this pandemic. There is no one excluded from the reconstruction, nor can the government be all-powerful to dictate a path, as has happened in the period of exception. A period of exception in which the President even granted – in the presidential decree on the renewal of the state of emergency – that the unions stay away from the preparation of urgent labor legislation, so that the process is not delayed.
After – second warning – Marcelo showed those who defend that leaving their elders (and other groups at risk) isolated while the rest of the population returns to normality, that this will not have their support. “This is not a fight for a group at risk, the elderly or the sick. We have resisted, and well, thinking and feeling that we can close, just protecting the elderly and the most vulnerable, letting society lead normal lives ”. This would, in the President’s opinion, “create involuntary ghettos and xenophobia“, Said Marcelo, stressing that the elderly“ are almost a third of the Portuguese population ”.
Another temptation that Marcelo registers and wants to see taken out of the way is any priority to the economy, above “life and health” (third alert). “On the choice of life and health, on the one hand, and economics, on the other, I would say that there are priorities and phases. In the beginning, life and health, otherwise the economy and society will never be able to see reconstruction starting. Always without letting the country stop ”, he argues.
After this period has passed and when saving time, there is a script practically outlined by the President of the Republic, which leaves one more warning (the bedroom) just to start: “It won’t be starting over as the country was on March 15th, it will be an uneven and difficult start” and here, he warns with the immediate response also present, “there direct support and financing that cannot wait months, by the end of the health crisis. They are the most urgent of the urgent ”, he concludes.
And it doesn’t stop there. Marcelo again calls the Government to account, when he says that – in addition to the support – it will be necessary (fifth warning), in the phase of social and economic recovery ”,“ public and private investment, with European, national, state and banking contributions, and entrepreneurs ”. And he adds another point to the roadmap: “In all this economic and social process, solidarity must be even more present than it is now, because the social and economic crisis hits deeper into the poorest, most excluded, marginalized and dependent”.
Once again, it warns of the need for “there to be truth” (sixth alert). “Nobody wins with there being no truth and everyone works to have that truth”, he concludes, in a promise that is at the same time a demand that he makes to public officials. Assume that there will be “errors, gaps, insufficiencies”, but that “nobody wants to lie to anyone, not even about health and life, nor about the economy and society”. A repair he had already made when he spoke to the country on the day of the first declaration of the state of emergency, and another time after the first meeting at Infarmed, in the weekly situation points on the epidemic situation of Covid-19 in Portugal.
The “will”, says the President, is “to beat the current outbreak by summer”, even though he admits reappearances “More faded next winter, until spring”. But even there, it is necessary to “go on supporting the economy”. And when he said goodbye to the program, at the end of the picture he was listing, Marcelo dropped the heaviest warning on António Costa’s shoulders (one more): “The years of recovery they shouldn’t be endless and they shouldn’t just be covering holes but thinking about the future in the long term”. The goals for government action in the near future (years) are in place, when the goalkeeper still has reservations about whether he intends to remain in the presidential post to enforce what he has failed to notice.
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