Yesterday Portugal’s prime minister finally resigned. I say finally because people here don’t like him. They actually hate him. I haven’t been following the politics that well but in this country you hear about it nevertheless and honestly, I’ve never seen a public figure giving a speech in the morning saying one thing, then when he appears again in the news in the evening, he claims he never said what he said that same morning.
It’s actually an amusement watching when the government have these meetings. Socrates, the prime minister talks, and the rest of the room sits and laughs of him. I’m serious, this is how this country is ruled. Sorry was ruled. Everyone is hoping for changes now. There’s not anyone who’s actually ready to take over or who is strong enough but the current leader of the opposition party will probably be the one.
I spoke to a friend about this last night and I asked if there’s any chance Socrates can pay for what he has caused this country (poor people are getting poorer and rich richer and Socrates has 20 chauffeurs so go figure) and my friend says he has been free f charge when it comes to corruption as he has been the prime minister but now when he no longer is, the opposition will probably get to him. I’m glad there’s a bit of justice in this story.
Want to tell you something else about this. The VAT here for food is about 20%, unless it’s not basic food such as bread, milk etc. So what the government has done lately is to lower the VAT for golfing (?!) to 6% but have increase some VAT when it comes to some food. Ehm do you see any good coming out of this? I certainly don’t. The guys who play golf will have the money to still do it even if you increase the VAT to 100% but the poor people who count every dime they have, suffer harder with increased food VAT. The justification about this decrease for golfing was that it should be better for the tourism… Well tourism brings money, but maybe only a small part of the tourists actually play golf. I certainly don’t.
Here are news about the resignation in (randomly picked online):
From conversations with friends and people chatting in the metro, in restaurants, on the streets etc, I can conclude that people don’t think it can get worse than Socrates. Hopefully there’ll be elections coming up soon. So times are exciting here in Portugal!
Galão claro 