Socrates responds to criticism that he promised “everything to everyone”

Former Prime Minister José Sócrates responded this Monday to criticism that he has been targeted with promising « everything to everyone. » In an opinion article published on the CNN Portugal page, it lists the measures implemented by its governments.

In a text entitled “With regard to electoral promises,” the former head of government answers, never to appoint to the Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, who on Saturday accused PS Secretary-General Pedro Nuno Santos, in his electoral program, “promising everything to everyone”, like José Sócrates.

“In 2005 I promised to make renewable energy a priority and then began a revolution that still lasts today. In this year I presented the country the technological plan and at the end of the legislature the country already had a technological scale with positive balance,” writes Socrates.

The article continues with an extensive list of other actions of its executives, such as the closure of schools with less than ten students, the “full time school”, the Magalhães program, the new opportunities, the Park works, the Simplex, the Solidarity Supplement for the elderly, the award of the TGV, the strategic and environmental evaluation of the new airport or the Social Security Reform.

« In the first two years (2005 to 2007) the government took the country out of the excessive deficit situation and in that same period we have achieved the highest economic growth in these difficult years (2007), » he says, adding that in the 2009 elections he promised a new same -sex marriage law, « which would be fulfilled in the next legislature. »

Socrates ends the article refuting what it claims to be the « historical scam » about the financial rescue to which the country was subject in 2011. « Portugal was forced to ask for external help not because of any government-spending policy, but because of the political crisis caused by the parliamentary lead of PEC IV, » he writes.