New Year speech: the President asks for courage to reinvent the future
The President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa made his usual New Year speech, live from his home for the first time. His main request was for Portugal to reinvent the future and have a more secure State.
For the first time, the President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa made his New Year speech live from his home, in Cascais, after having been discharged from the hospital due to an emergency hernia operation. The President of the Portuguese Republic highlighted some key ideas and wishes for the year that is now beginning.
Portugal needs “courage to reinvent the future”, stated Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, while assuring that 2018 “has to be the year of that reinvention, more than just the year to rebuild”. He added, as a warning: “We need to reinvent the trust of the Portuguese in their safety, which is more than government stability, healthy finance, growing employment or income. It is the certainty that, in critical moments, the State’s key missions do not fail nor are exempted from their responsibilities”.
"The – recent – past is a warning about what failed in 2017, so that we show the same commitment in failure as we did in what was successful. That past demands courage to reinvent the future.”
In a year which he considered “strange and contradictory”, both in the world, Europe and especially in Portugal, Marcelo underlined some examples of relevant facts for the country in 2017: the death former President Mário Soares, the Pope’s visit and the good news for public finance in issues concerning stability.
“As if in a dream, we almost had our public finances stabilizing, our banking solidifying, our economy and employment growing, our interests and then our public debt shrinking, Europe declaring the end of the excessive deficit and our Finance minister heading the Eurogroup, the markets attesting our merit”, Marcelo stated.
Although he looked back to 2017, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa underlined that “what’s important is to speak of the future”. “The — recent — past is a warning about what failed in 2017, so that we show the same commitment in failure as we did in what was successful. That past demands courage to reinvent the future”, the President reinforced.
