Marques Mendes appeals to the Government for “common sense” on the beaches: “It is fundamental for health, people need to breathe”

Public transport “was not the chaos that was thought”, the Portuguese had civility and “internalized the use of a mask” and the return to activity was not reflected in the growth of those infected or hospitalized – Marques Mendes made a “positive balance” of the first eight days of lack of clarity in his commentary on SIC’s Jornal da Noite this Sunday. But he warned that, on an economic level, “the news is bad”, and “the recession may be bigger than expected, if tourism takes longer to recover”. “The worst year of the troika was 2012, and this is even worse than the worst time of the troika,” he said.

The economic “bad news”, according to Marques Mendes, started with the postponement at European level of the presentation of aid to countries, “especially those that the EU points out as being able to have a deep recession, namely Portugal. There is a risk of reaching the summer and the money hasn’t arrived, and the later the worse.

Regarding the reopening of daycare centers, Marques Mendes says he has “a great concern” and defends that “some rules that were defined by the Government are impractical, the distance of two to three meters between children is impossible”. Regarding homes and the possibility of visiting again, he appealed to the Government to “give a light to the end of the tunnel, to say if it is in June or when it might be”, he stressed, recalling that “so far there has not yet been a meeting to define a plan “and that” our elderly are very vulnerable, for two months in isolation without being able to receive family members “.

“Costa’s popularity disguises weak ministers”

Regarding the beaches, the commentator referred to having known “by the headline of the Express” that things like “fences and drones are being prepared, which is impractical, it seems that we are in a police state”. Marques Mendes asks the Government here for “common sense measures”, to “trust the citizens’ civility” and providing a lot of information to people. “The beach is fundamental for health” and after long quarantines at home, “people need to breathe, enjoy the freedom to be happy”, he stressed.

At the political level, the highlight of the week for Marques Mendes was the controversy with Novo Banco, considering that the Prime Minister was disallowed by the Minister of Finance, “dispatching the money without consulting him” – it is not justifiable that it was a communication error . “They don’t speak, when it comes to giving 850 million euros?”, He asked.

Commenting on Rui Rio’s performance, he maintained that the PSD leader “was serious at TAP”, but was “unhappy when he compared a media company to a shoe factory”. Regarding Chega’s proposal for a confinement plan for the Roma community, he stressed that “André Ventura is not concerned with gypsies, he is concerned with showing up and having a cause, but he went to wool and left shorn”.

Marques Mendes defended that the crisis of the pandemic changed the Portuguese politics “much more than imagined” starting with the governance. “António Costa is very popular, and that gives him power”, stressed the commentator, maintaining that “the popularity of António Costa disguises the weak ministers”. The circumstance of Covid-19 leaves the opposition in a difficult situation, and who is going to make the next budget feasible “is either the contraption or the PSD itself”, because “no one in Portugal would notice a political crisis” in the middle of the pandemic or “interrupting recovery, “he concluded.

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