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Goodbye Austerity, there is a new hope for Europe: Portugal


June 5, 2017 9:44 am by Fernando Porta

When António Costa’s socialist government came in charge in Portugal in 2015, political commentators labeled his anty-austerity left-wing experiment with the word “Geringonça”, that means something faulty. Portugal at that time was a country suffering a deep recession, high unemployment and a wave of emigration after four years of harsh austerity imposed by the European Troika on the conservative government of Pedro Passos Coelho: the quid pro quo for a €78bn bailout. Costa did what until then had been unthinkable in Portuguese politics: in the name of rolling back austerity, he negotiated a government pact not only with the Left Bloc, a radical forerunner of Greece’s Syriza, but also the hardline Communist Party. Two years later, Costa’s government succeded in reversing austerity, reducing the country’s pubic debt and giving a hope to Portuguese people. A people who never quit fighting for a change during the troika’s years, a people who never forget the legacy of april 25, 1974: the Carnation Revolution that freed the country from right- wing dictatorship of  António Salazar. And today “Geringonça” has changed his meaning: it means hope. See video…

 

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