The meetings are over and Pedro Passsos Coelho says that he will not be blackmailed by the socialist party leader and that there is no way he will govern alongside the socialists.
Passos Coelho said he refused to subject the country to "political blackmail" and it was the coalition which won the election, not the socialists.
The prime minister was speaking to journalists at the end of a meeting in Brussels and rejected the political role reversal proposed by the socialists, adding that he does not intend to have “any further meeting with the PS."
Passos Coelho has reached his diplomatic limits; "I've had two meetings with the PS and I do not intend to have any more meeting with the PS.”
The PM said that the socialists can present their proposals "at any time" and said that the ruling coalition party has "taken the necessary steps that were needed, with great humility, to search for the Socialist Party’s support," which has not happened.
"We said very clearly that we did not have an absolute majority in parliament and therefore we can not govern with our programme intact so we are ready to make concessions, but we need to know what the PS wants aso we can give the Portuguese people stability," said the Prime Minister.
Passos Coelho stressed that his door is always open to sensible proposals but he rejects overturning the election results and letting the socialists in to run the country.
Last night’s meeting between PS leader António Costa and Pedro Passos Coelho ended with nothing resolved and bad feelings continuing.
The PM said that the meeting had achieved "absolutely nothing" and that he had expected some proposals to mull over, which have yet to materialise.
But António Costa has a cunning plan, to try and end the long-running feud that has kept the socialist and the communist parties apart since 1975 and is committed to work a deal with the communist party to create an alternative government in Portugal.
The President of the Republic, Cavaco Silva, has until Thursday night to make some sense of this political mess which is not doing the country any good.
Silva was expecting the parties to meet and develop a way forward. They have met but seem as far apart as before the election.
Comments
We are anxiously wait for the next chapter of this fairy tale.
Where do we go from here.
As he sees it the PS should be renamed the Pretty Similar Party as it has always shared so much with the PSD and CDS. And for him the real split is between the Socialists and the Left.
The Block (Bloco de Esquerda - BE) and the Communists that Ed. mentions (PCP) campaigned amongst other things to leave the euro and NATO. But these are also now flexible and can wait if they can get into bed with the PS. They were only ever soundbites anyway to slap down people saying Portuguese politics is so 'samey'.
Everything depends now on the Elite Owner / Managers of the Means of Production. (EOMMP) Always in the background pulling the levers of power. Have they lined up their ducks and how neat is the row they are in ? Or are they lining up their tanks to park on the Presidents lawn? As a right winger he was put in power both as PM, now as President - precisely to stop this lefty socialist nonsense.
http://www.publico.pt/politica/noticia/francisco-assis-ps-nao-pode-ser-governo-custe-o-custar-1711234