"Sometimes Passos Coelho thought or gave the impression that he thought the 'troika' was a virtuous good, I thought the 'troika' was a necessary evil", said Paulo Portas in his television commentary space on TVI, responding to the statements of the then prime minister and government coalition partner during the period in which Portugal was under intervention by the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Last week, in an interview with the 'podcast' "Eu estive lá", by Rádio Observador, the former president of the PSD, in conversation with journalist Maria João Avillez, revealed that during his government with the CDS-PP, the 'troika' signalled "from a certain point" that there was a problem of trust in relation to the coalition partner and Minister of State and Foreign Affairs, Paulo Portas, and "began to demand signed letters" from him.

"I think he doesn't know this: to prevent a humiliation of the Minister of State and Foreign Affairs, I forced the Minister of Finance to sign the letter to the institutions with me and him. The three of us signed it. The 'troika' demanded a letter from him alone. Because they didn't trust him", said Passos Coelho.

Asked if he knew about this demand for him to sign letters, Paulo Portas said that he had signed several letters for the 'troika' and pointed out that "in a democracy, it is the Portuguese people who give mandates of confidence".

Stating that "those who do not feel, are not the children of good people", Paulo Portas considered that the former prime minister's comments "were not appropriate, nor fair", but refused to "use private conversations between political leaders" and to enter "into personal controversy" with Passos Coelho.

"It is 2024, a centre-right government has just arrived, I do not see what use it would be to contribute to this controversy", he commented.

Paulo Portas recalled that he agreed with Passos Coelho on the need to solve Portugal's insolvency problem, to comply with a memorandum from the "troika" that they had not negotiated and to seek to find a clean exit for Portugal from the emergency programme, but he pointed to the TSU of pensioners as one of the main divergences and a "difficult moment" in the coalition.

"Not infrequently, Passos Coelho used the expression of 'going beyond the troika'. I have always been more sceptical about this idea. For me, to endure that programme that would solve Portugal's bankruptcy and allow us to recover our normality, it was necessary to have social cohesion in Portuguese society, for people to feel that the sacrifices were equitable, the restrictions were distributed and did not exceed a certain limit", he said.

"The TSU of pensions was one of the difficult moments. The measure came as a structural measure, therefore mandatory and a condition of financing. After this tension, this measure became optional and ceased to be a condition of financing. I thought it was a double penalty on pensioners, which exceeded the limits and would create the idea among the elderly that they were being targeted in a programme. I think time has proved me right", he said, adding that six months later the measure proved to be unnecessary.

For Paulo Portas, if the measure was not necessary, "it was probably exaggerated" and, for the now commentator, with "a little more flexibility and a little less rigidity", the programme could have been carried out "without excessively unbalancing the country's social cohesion".

"There was no need", he concluded.

[News updated at 22:27]

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