Portugal’s ministers – even the one laid-out with excessive vertigo on the eve of the teachers’ strike – are touring the country today ahead of a weekend of celebrations to commemorate the first two years of the so-called “gizmo government” (known in Portuguese as the ‘geringonça’) – the extraordinary left-wing alliance that brings together parties that had never previously worked together.
According to Público, emphasis is on the government’s commitment to “develop the interior” and recover areas devastated by last summer’s forest fires.
The order of business involves the ministers either inaugurating infrastructures or visiting projects that are already up and running.
Initiatives are planned throughout the country except for the Algarve, where no visits or events will be going ahead at all.
Says Público, “celebrations” begin today (Friday) with a meeting with mayors organised by business association AICEP.
Sunday will see an extraordinary meeting of the council of ministers in which the rail link between Covilhã and Guarda, closed 10 years ago, is due to be “re-established” at a cost of €52 million (the idea being to stimulate mobility of populations in the interior), and in which a panel of around 50 people (“as representative as possible of the Portuguese population”) will answer “about 80 questions”.
The answers will be the basis of questions that the government will then be answering later in the afternoon, says Público.
Photo: https://twitter.com/govpt
