The failure to open vacancies for hiring family doctors in the Castelo Branco district shows that “this Government’s disrespect for the interior is blatant”, said PS secretary general, Pedro Nuno Santos, in Idanha-a-Nova this evening.
The socialist leader participated in a dinner celebrating the 100th anniversary of Mário Soares’ birth in that village in the Castelo Branco district, where he criticized Luís Montenegro’s Executive.
“There are 28 thousand users without a family doctor in this district. The Government opened a competition to hire doctors but for Castelo Branco there were zero”, lamented Pedro Nuno Santos, for whom another example of the current Government’s “lack of interest” in the interior was the suspension of the Plan of Serra da Estrela Revitalization.
“The biggest investments in the interior were made by the PS, but the work is not yet finished”, countered the socialist general secretary.
Pedro Nuno Santos also did not forget the abolition of tolls and highlighted that “the PS did not do any favors to the interior”, but wanted to show “the deep respect for those who continue to live and work here”.
“The interior is not a burden, it is an opportunity to develop the country. The PS is the people’s party and to continue developing the interior. When they say that democracy is threatened by extremism it is also because the people of the interior feel forgotten , deceived and relegated to the background”, he considered.
A situation that would not have been possible with Mário Soares, who was “the president of all Portuguese, from the coast to the interior, from north to south. He was the one who initiated the Open Presidencies and carried them out in the interior”, recalled Pedro Nuno Santos.
The dinner celebrating the centenary of the founder of the PS and former president of the Republic took place in the Feira Raiana tent, in Idanha-a-Nova, where around 900 people were present, according to the organization told the Lusa agency.
Before Pedro Nuno Santos, Vítor Pereira, mayor of Covilhã and president of the PS Federation of Castelo Branco, spoke, who appealed to the party’s general secretary not to let “the right-wing contaminate us with the Presidential elections, whose sole purpose is to divert focus on what really matters.”
Armindo Jacinto, local mayor who cannot run again due to having reached the term limit, took stock of the last 12 years in Idanha-a-Nova and challenged the PS leader to organize the party’s next national congress in Vila Raiana.
João Soares, representing the family of the historic socialist leader, recalled that his father was “an exceptional man when he founded the PS while still under a dictatorship” and added that “there was never anyone in Portugal who fought for freedom as much as the socialists”.
And at this moment, in his opinion, “Portugal, Europe and the world are in need of someone who fights again for freedom and peace”.
Source: rr.sapo.pt
