Despite all the negativity surrounding the recent Constitutional Court (TC) ruling over pensions, President of the Republic Cavaco Silva is unlikely to challenge the coalition government’s unpopular State Budget for 2014. Instead, say political thinkers, he will probably go in for “successive checking” – so that the budget can come into effect on January 1 next year “without any adverse reaction on the markets”.
And in the meantime, Silva has turned his attention to projecting Portugal’s image overseas for positive reasons”.
Correio da Manhã reports how yesterday the chief of state met with the recently-created Council for the Portuguese Diaspora in Cascais keen to discuss ways of making the 10 million Portuguese proud of their heritage – as this is “a first step in promoting Portugal in the world, where it is still largely unknown”.
The upbeat meeting involving political figures as well as business leaders, actors, musicians and others connected with culture, concentrated on Portugal’s image overseas, although time was given to a number of pronouncements on internal problems.
The executive president of Lloyds Bank António Horta commented that the recent TC spanner-in-the-works of the budget plans will “not change the government’s strategy”, while Economy Minister Pires de Lima confirmed that alternatives to plug the 400 million euro hole created by the TC veto “will certainly be found”.
