In March 2021, the local press announced that André Martins, a member of the PEV – a party for which he was a deputy – would be chosen by the CDU to lead the coalition list for the municipality of Setúbal. The process, O Setubalense said at the time, was “tweaked” as it had been “far from consensus” within the PCP-led coalition: “Other names, within the PCP itself, were indicated as available to adopt. leading the list to run for city council,” the newspaper read.
What was at stake was the arduous succession of Maria das Dores Meira, the elected CDU president for three consecutive terms. Struck by the term statute of limitations, Maria das Dores had two options: either leave politics or move to another room. He chose Almada and tried to win back for the CDU a bastion that had been lost to the PS in 2017. Lost.
When he was elected as a candidate, André Martins held the position of chairman of the municipal council in the municipality and was a councilor for several years. From 1987 to 1995, he was a deputy to the General Assembly of the Republic. On September 26, 2021, he went to vote for the candidacy for mayor and won. However, the CDU lost the majority in the college of mayors: it had seven elected members (including mayor) out of eleven and dropped to five. PS increased from three to four and PSD from one to two. Together, the two opposition parties have a majority. After all – and after a general move of electoral erosion – the CDU lost about seven thousand votes in Setúbal (from 22,400 to 15,300). In the municipal elections in 2017, he had obtained 49.9 percent of the vote, in 2021 34.4 percent. Last January, with the disappearance of the PEV from the House of Representatives, André Martins became the most prominent member of the party.
The tenure has not been easy. André Martins admitted a few days ago that the Ukrainian refugees who had been received in the county by Russian immigrants near Putin were welcomed by Russian immigrants near Putin. The newspaper said at least 160 Ukrainian refugees had already been taken in by Russian Igor Khashin, a member of Edintsvo and former president of the Russian House and Coordinating Council of Russian compatriots, and his wife, Yulia Khashin, a municipal employee.
André Martins admits that the controversy has “negatively damaged” Setúbal’s image and says he is now waiting “in all serenity” for the result of the investigation carried out by the Public Prosecution Service (MP). The General Inspectorate of Finance – which oversees the local government – also conducted two investigations and sent the respective results to the MP. The National Data Protection Commission has also launched an investigation, which is still ongoing.
André Martins, for his part, assures “serenity”, but at the same time says that he “intensely” wants the investigations “to be completed quickly”. And he shoots at his opponents, though without naming them: “I am talking about the city and country which some claim to be the defenders, but whose prestige and image they did everything they could to inflict damage, and of took the opportunity to only promote themselves personally and partisanously.”
Source: DN
