The President of the Government reiterated on Wednesday that his primary concern “is to manage the interests of the Azores and safeguard their position in these difficult moments,” adding that he is neither “the Prime Minister’s publicist nor the responsible for the works carried out by the opposition.”
Carlos César answered to journalists, after a hearing he granted at the Sant’Ana Palace, on the measures to combat the crisis recently announced by the Government of the Republic, and thus stood out from the positions taken by other political leaders.
 For the President of the Government, “regardless the impact of these measures in the Azores or in Mainland Portugal, there are measures whose scope and technical solution are not yet known.”
Revealing that he will meet with the Prime Minister to clarify this matter later this week, Carlos César remembered, however, that the “transfers to the region under the Regional Finance Act represent about 0.5 per cent of the State’s current global expenditure” and, therefore, there will not be a significant reduction of Government’s expenditure in this context.
Furthermore, in accordance with the aforementioned Act, there would be a reduction of such transfers next year and he believes that the law must be enforced, as he had already explained on another occasion, adding that the projected reduction for 2011 is of approximately 6.1 million Euros.
Also questioned on the issues related to a possible revision of the Constitution - especially the possible extinction of the office of Representative of the Republic - Carlos César admitted this possibility.
Defending the importance of understanding one of the main references of autonomy, and the evolution “of that position, which is a bit strange in the process of autonomic construction,” Carlos César stated that “there are conditions for a natural evolution, in which the powers now held by the Representative of the Republic are distributed to other institutions or other holders within the institutional autonomic framework, without any loss of coherence of the State’s structures.”
If it is the President of the Assembly or a separate entity to be created within the autonomy framework, there is availability, assured Carlos César, as long as it encourages a consensus.
“Now, we do not want that this process results in the reinforcement of the imprisonment of the there are conditions for regarding the free exercise of regional autonomy,” stated Carlos César.