Portugal better off for not following Socialist advice: PM

Portugal's Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho on Monday said Portugal finds itself in a "different" situation to Greece because it didn't follow the Socialist Party's advice.

"We, thankfully, are not in Greece's situation, which is in a second (bailout) program, and maybe will require a third," Passos Coelho told journalists at the Catholic University in Lisbon, according to Portuguese news agency Lusa.

"We are not in that situation because until today we didn't follow the Socialist Party's advice," he added.

On Sunday, Greece's anti-austerity Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras vowed to end Greece's "pain and suffering" after winning the general election, and called for the renegotiation of its international bailout programs, worth 240 billion euros (270 billion U.S. dollars).

Portugal entered a 78 billion euros bailout program in 2011 with the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank and had to impose harsh budgetary and restructuring in exchange for that money. The debt-laden country also witnessed a populist backlash as voters expressed their discontent after years of sacrifice.

Portugal ended its program last year with a clean exit like Ireland. But critics claim the country is in a worse position than before the bailout, with debt standing at around 129 percent of GDP and unemployment at a record high.

The troika and the ruling Social Democrats were punished by the Portuguese public in the European elections last May with the Socialists winning 31 percent of the vote. Passos Coelho's Social Democrats and smaller CDS-PP coalition garnered around 27.7 percent of the vote.

Passos Coelho said on Monday that the Socialist Party's strategy was very similar to the Left bloc's approach, which he said implied "not complying with the goals or objectives that were set out" and "renegotiating the program, which we have already ended."

He said Portugal would not have ended its program had it followed the Socialist Party's strategy.

"We didn't close the assistance program last year for having followed the Socialist Party's strategy, but for doing exactly the opposite," he said.

"That makes me very conformable and confident in terms of the path that we are following to this day, which is a path of more hope for the Portuguese," he added.

Passos Coelho didn't comment on the Socialist Party leader's claim that Syriza's victory in the Sunday elections was a "sign of hope" and meant the "depletion of austerity policies."

Asked about whether he was confident about the legislative elections, Passos Coelho said there was still "a long time to go."

The general elections are set to take place in October this year. The country still needs to cut its budget deficit to 2.5 percent of GDP this year. (1 euro = 1.13 U.S. dollars) Endit