It will be Thursday morning. At a time when intrigue is boiling within the PSD faction, with its leader, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, grappling with internal attacks, the party’s president, Luís Montenegro, meets with the deputies. And the goal is essentially one: to indicate personally to the parliamentary group that the party leadership and its leader support the head of the bank, rejecting the criticisms leveled against him.
At a press conference this Monday at the national headquarters of the PSD, at the start of four days of health initiatives, Luís Montenegro was asked about his first year at the head of the Social Democrats, which ended this Monday , and on the tensions between the bank and the parliamentary leader, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, who was on his side.
“We are very, very satisfied with what we have done, but we want to do much more on the path we have promised to revive a strong, energetic, mobilized and mobilizing PSD to give Portugal a new majority and a new government,” he said. said.
Asked if Miranda Sarmento would “jeopardize his place”, the PSD president reaffirmed his confidence in the parliamentary leader he had chosen shortly after the Congress that elected him, replacing Paulo Mota Pinto, who had been in office for three months , had again elected: “I will be present at the next meeting of the parliamentary group, alongside the parliamentary group, as we have always been, and especially alongside its leader, who has done an exceptional job at the head of the bank and is aware of the challenges that await us as a responsible opposition, consistent, serene, steadfast and committed to the goal of governing Portugal,” he said.
“Profound Cowardice”
On Friday, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento sent deputies a Whatsapp message saying that anonymously criticizing the media under anonymity is “profound cowardice that only harms the party”, following a news report in the Observer that reported that the parliamentary leader of the PSD allegedly withdrew a request last week on health grounds due to his wife’s professional connections to the target.
Speaking to the deputies, the head of the PSD bank denied this version and reiterated that the withdrawal of the request in question, reported by Lusa, was “only due to procedural problems” and took the opportunity to leave a message behind to his party’s parliamentarians : “That there are deputies who understand that I am not a good parliamentary leader, that I have no political profile and that others would be better leaders, I can accept without any problem if the criticism is direct and frontal is.”, he said. But “that they do it in the newspapers, under the cover of anonymity, seems to me a profound cowardice that only harms the PSD”.
This Monday, after a visit to the Garcia da Orta Hospital in Almada, Setúbal, the PSD leader criticized the dissenting voices heard within the government over the location in Santarém of the new airport that will serve the metropolitan area from Lisbon. “How do they fight in the public square for the country that best suits them because it is their origin or because it is locations where they have interests?” he wondered, calling on the prime minister to “order the house” to bring.
Source: DN
