Anyone who only saw the beginning of the debate between Catarina Martins and João Cotrim de Figueiredo, held by TVI on Thursday night, might have thought that the two presidential candidates combined to embarrass moderator José Alberto Carvalho. It is true that the MEPs also find themselves at ideological antipodes, the first minutes were notable for their convergence, to the point where the former leaders of the Left Bloc and the Liberal Initiative ended up completing each other’s sentences.
Of course, it helped that, after Cotrim de Figueiredo once again criticized SIC’s “highly questionable survey”, which placed him very far from the front group, the debate began with questions related to the hundreds of wiretaps carried out on former prime minister António Costa, and the revelation of some by Sábado magazine. The liberal considered it worrying that “there is confusion between autonomy and a total lack of scrutiny of the Public Ministry”, the blockade added that the Attorney General of the Republic must explain the “widespread listening”and not just because it is something “that causes natural alarm because it involves a Prime Minister and a process that determined the fall of a Government”.
The problems of Justice, which lead to some having “their names dragged through the mud” and others benefiting from the “very perverse effect of processes dragging on until they expire”, have allowed the presidential candidates to converge more than would be expected. When Catarina Martins protested that Amadeu Guerra had said that “there could be a Christmas gift” related to the preventive investigation into current Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, Cotrim de Figueiredo added that “we didn’t know who the gift would be for”.
Catarina Martins may not have appreciated the “couple who finishes each other’s sentences” statement, but she agreed with her opponent when he said that greater intervention by political power is not a solution, defending that the Public Ministry “must regulate itself, without corporate interests”. Otherwise, citizens will be given reason to distrust justice.
But the agreement ended as soon as the debate moved on to the investment of 5.8 billion euros, announced by the Minister of Defense, Nuno Melo, involving the purchase of frigates and the creation of an armored vehicle factory. Catarina Martins said that such expenditure of resources “did not seem appropriate” to her, considered necessary “for fundamental areas” of defending sovereignty, but also in access to health and housing. “Disproportionate” was the MEP’s verdict.
“Catarina Martins is trying to hide the discomfort that this issue causes her”, said João Cotrim de Figueiredo, highlighting that her opponent wants to see Portugal outside of NATOwhich he considered to be “our guarantee of defense”. And he recalled that countries like Estonia and Finland were not invaded by Russia, despite having weaker armies than the Ukrainian one, precisely because they belong to the Atlantic Alliance, which also now includes Sweden.
The presidential candidate supported by the Left Bloc heard the liberal say that “what Putin is doing only happens because he can feel weakness and a lack of cohesion” within NATO. And he soon retorted that the president of the Russian Federation feels, on the contrary, that he “has Donald Trump on his side” to carry out what he described as an “imperialist strategy of occupying Ukrainian territory”.
Referring to Donald Trump, the blocker said that “the threat comes from within NATO itself”, taking into account the North American president’s threats to Canada and Denmark, when raising the possibility of invading Greenland. And he added to it what he called “an attack on European democracies through a communications war in which American technoligarchs and Russian technoligarchs are allies”.
Cotrim de Figueiredo defended the need to strengthen NATO’s European pillar “to defend its specific interests”, leading Catarina Martins to respond that having a North American general in command “is at the heart of the entire architecture” of the Atlantic Alliance.
QWhen the debate reached Ukraine, the blockade accused the United Kingdom and France of “pushing Ukraine into war” in 2022 – although she disavowed herself minutes later – when Zelensky was considering accepting neutrality towards NATO in exchange for the integrity of his territory. For his part, the liberal recalled that “two days before the Russian invasion, the Left Bloc was calling the Ukrainian president a Nazi.” “He’s debating with me”, reacted Catarina Martins, who by that time had already left the party leadership to Mariana Mortágua.
Speaking out against his rival’s arguments in the race for the Presidency of the Republic, Cotrim de Figueiredo recalled having been in Kiev two months after the start of the war, refusing that the Ukrainians had been pushed into the war. “I have never seen people so committed to defending their country”, he said, adding that they are aware of the importance of belonging to NATO, as they “see their neighbors in the Baltic not being attacked”.
At the end of the debate were ideas about Portugal’s economic model. When asked if “less State is a better State”, Cotrim de Figueiredo said that the State “must be in all functions of sovereignty and where the function of regulation is essential”defending the example of public-private partnerships (PPP) in Health and holding the Bloco de Esquerda responsible for the abandonment of some by António Costa’s socialist executives. “It makes no difference to me who provides the service, as long as it is the best service,” he said.
Catarina Martins, upon hearing José Alberto Carvalho ask if “more State is a better State”, insisted that nothing in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic prohibits “free initiative in Health and Education”. But he considered it “absurd” that the State guarantees a network of public schools but also pays for private schools.
“Are you happy with the National Health Service that is in operation?” asked Cotrim de Figueiredo, recalling that Portugal once again has more than a million users without a family doctor. He contrasted this with the primacy of “people’s satisfaction”, while accusing the Left Bloc of “trying to sidestep” the Liberal Initiative with the idea of wanting to favor private individuals. “Private people are the ones who have benefited most from the collapse of the National Health Service”, he argued.
At the end of the debate was the recurring issue of ADSE, with the liberal defending that the system reserved for public employees and their families should now have other alternatives, but open to everyone and financed with the distribution of funds from the State Budgettaking into account the number of members of each system. For her part, the blocker recalled that public servants pay 3.5% of their salary to have access to ADSE and quoted words from those responsible for the Cascais Hospital PPP about “getting rid of unprofitable patients”.
Once again about the SNS, Catarina Martins ended up saying that “we can have a system that works well based on what is in the Constitution”, accusing her rival of defending the opposite. Cotrim de Figueiredo told him that he “doesn’t need to distort so much” what he had said, but there was no time for more. Not many voters were undecided between the two candidates who went to TVI this Thursday.