Pedro Nuno Santos returns to parliament this Tuesday to take over as PS deputy, six months after he resigned from the government over compensation he paid Alexandra Reis for leaving TAP.
The former infrastructure and housing minister, head of the socialist list for the circle of Aveiro in the last parliamentary elections, replaces Rosa Venâncio in the Assembly of the Republic, after six months in which he asked for his mandate as deputy to be suspended.
And he has already made it known that on his return he does not want to interfere in the government areas under his direct tutelage and that he will return to parliament without cause to complain about the lack of solidarity on the part of Prime Minister António Costa.
About three weeks ago, Pedro Nuno Santos stated in the parliamentary committee of inquiry TAP: “I had and have a good relationship with the Prime Minister (…) I have never felt a lack of solidarity from the Prime Minister”.
In a recent interview with TSF, the chairman of the PS parliamentary group, Eurico Brilhante Dias, also chose to play down the presence of Pedro Nuno Santos on the PS bench, even countering that “it is always stronger when it welcomes a qualified party”. cadre, with government experience”.
As Minister of Infrastructure and Housing, Pedro Nuno Santos was directly involved in two of the cases most affecting the internal stability of the executive, with an absolute majority of António Costa.
The first was at the end of June last year when it published a regulation on the location of the new Lisbon airport without prior knowledge from the Prime Minister and in direct contradiction to the assurance he had given that the choice would be made by the State through of a process agreed with the PSD.
On December 28, he resigned after it became known that his secretary of state, Hugo Mendes, had supervised the process to pay Alexandra Reis half a million euros in damages to leave the board of TAP.
Weeks after his resignation, supposedly after consulting his WhatsApp messages, Pedro Nuno himself assumed that he too knew that this compensation had been paid to the former Secretary of State for Finance.
Secretary General of the JS headed by José Sócrates in the PS, deputy since 2005, supporter and later opponent of the former leader António José Seguro, Secretary of State for Parliamentary Affairs in the first executive branch of “Geringonça”, Pedro Nuno Santos started five years ago, at the 2018 Congress, as a potential candidate to succeed António Costa.
On a political level, he tried at various times to draw ideological divisions against the leadership of António Costa, only a few of which are highlighted here.
In the middle of the campaign for the 2019 European elections, he criticized the European socialists’ agreements with the European People’s Party (PPE) and liberal forces; after the 2019 legislation, he regretted the lack of a written agreement with the Bloco de Esquerda for the formation of the second PS minority government; even after the latest political crisis, in charge of the 2022 budget, he continued to defend the “Contrap” as a government solution.
In the PS sessions where he speaks, he usually leaves a warning to more liberal or centre-left militants: “The PS has two letters: P for party, S for socialist. It has no other letters”.
The PS also highlights some of his more neo-Marxist treatises, such as the one in which he confronts gaspeppers and shoe bosses. Although he also praised the contribution of the footwear sector to national exports in other circumstances, and ended his office as minister to defend the partial reprivatization of TAP.
Source: DN
