“The PSD – that same party that claims to be an alternative – is showing dangerous signs, signs of giving in, signs of those who exchange principles for convenience, signs of those who think that power is worth more than coherence”, said Mariana Leitão, who was speaking at the opening of the IL National Council meeting, which takes place this Sunday in Coimbra.
The leader of the Liberal Initiative said that, when Chega “gets its foot in the door, demands, pressures, imposes”, the PSD, “instead of saying no, does the math”, accusing the Social Democrats of giving in to the extreme right.
“The Liberal Initiative does not give in. Freedom, responsibility and equality before the law are not negotiable, because we will not allow freedom to be a hostage to populism, no matter which side it comes from”, he stressed.
For Mariana Leitão, IL is the only alternative that guarantees that under no circumstances “will there be any type of agreements with the extremes”.
“If the PSD wants to continue playing socialists in the morning and populists in the afternoon, then let it do it alone. If Luís Montenegro wants to betray his own ‘no, no’, and the commitments he makes with the Portuguese, you can be sure that I won’t do it”, he added.
In an intervention lasting around ten minutes, the IL leader also criticized the fact that there are people who work “and are poor”, pointed to the housing crisis and addressed health, refusing to allow the debate to be about the minister’s resignation.
“Will the minister’s departure resolve the waiting lists? Will it resolve the system’s inefficiencies? Will it motivate health professionals who are saturated? It won’t. The Liberal Initiative doesn’t want to know who sits in the chair, it wants to know who has the solutions and the courage to implement them”, he said, arguing that “all installed capacity — public, private and social — should be placed at the service of people”.
In her speech, Mariana Leitão also criticized the State Budget for 2026, considering it a “huge disappointment” because it shows “that this Government does not have the courage to change the country”.
“When the Government had the opportunity to show that it wanted to be different from the PS, what did it do? It presented a document that could have been written by a socialist government. The obsession with keeping the State fat, slow and cumbersome remains the same”, he noted.
For Mariana Leitão, people will continue to be “suffocated by taxes” and the economy “tied up by bureaucracy”.