PCP Criticizes Decentralization Agreement: "It's an Insult to Local Power"

Jaime Toga said in Porto today that the decentralization package agreed between the government and ANMP is a mistake that "will not end regional asymmetries or contribute to territorial cohesion" . One day after Alfredo Monteiro, PCP, Vice President of the ANMP and President of the Municipal Assembly of the Seixal Chamber, yesterday at the meeting of the ANMP in Elvas, the terms of the Decentralization Agreement signed by Eduardo Cabrita, The Minister of Internal Administration, and Manuel Machado, Jaime Toga announced that the PCP will continue to fight in the Assembly of the Republic to deepen, in the sectoral negotiations, powers to transfer to municipalities

"The process of decentralization is inseparable from the constitution of the administrative regions, without which we see a lack of responsibility of the State and the transfer of responsibilities to the local authorities in matters of education, health or culture, "explains the member of the Political Committee of the PCP Central Committee. 20 years after the referendum on regionalization, Toga stresses that the arguments of those who oppose the process were deemed false, without which, he said, "there will be no coherent delimitation of competences nor real transfer of powers Local Finance. "

Jaime Toga argues that the PCP will not withdraw from the draft resolution presented to Parliament and that it defends the creation of administrative regions over the course of the year. year 2019, a question that is urgently needed to comply with "breaking with the good policy that confronts local power." For the member of the PCP Central Committee, the decentralization package negotiated between PS and PSD does not create conditions for the replacement of parishes that have been extinguished, and to create conditions for municipalities to plan and implement the infrastructure necessary for the complete development of the country's interior desertification. "

Toga also warns that critics of local authorities Rui Moreira and Eduardo Vítor Rodrigues should have" a cautious political reading, "claiming that they are" made according to the mantle they want to wear. " "In the case of the mayor of Gaia, he points out that as a member of the PS National Secretariat, he is jointly responsible for promoting the hasty agreement, while advising the Mayor of Porto to fight for better decentralization within institutions and not threats of abandoning the ANMP. "Contributing to the weakening of municipal associations is a bad principle, an attitude similar to that of the boy who owns the ball that l & # 39; "Catch and leave when it loses," he concludes.