Xinhua, Lisbon :
Dozens of Portuguese citizens protested outside the headquarters of the Banco Espirito Santo (BES) in capital Lisbon Saturday against a bailout plan for the bank.
“We are going to have to pay for this, who else will? They (the government) are liars,” said protestor Joao Salazar, 62, a retiree. “The debt of today is the robbery of yesterday by the dominating class,” read one banner.
“My salary has been cut systematically since 2011 and now we will have more cuts and will continue to pay the debts of the bank because they lived above their possibilities,” said Margarita Correia, 53, a teacher.
Protests were also held in the second largest Portuguese city of Porto, some 320 km north of Lisbon.
BES saw a net loss of 3.58 billion euros (about 4.8 billion U.S. dollars) in the first quarter amid alleged corruption among board members which led the Bank of Portugal, the central bank, to announce a bailout plan of 4.9 billion euros last week.
Both Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho and Deputy Prime Minister Paulo Portas have stressed that nationalizing the bank was the best option, but the organizers of the protest said the money used for the bailout will come from taxpayer’s money despite the authorities insisting that this won’t be the case.
Portuguese opposition parties, the Socialist Party and the Communist Party, have been strongly against the idea of nationalizing the bank, saying that taxpayers will have to pay the burden. (1 euro = 1.34 U.S. dollars)
