The former coordinator of the Bloco de Esquerda Catarina Martins formalized this Monday her request to resign from her parliamentary mandate with effect from September 14 and will be replaced by Isabel Pires.
In the letter addressed to the President of the Assembly of the Republic, Augusto Santos Silva, to which Lusa had access, the deputy elected by the Porto constituency “requests for personal reasons the resignation of her mandate with effect from September 14, 2023 inclusive.”
According to BE, Catarina Martins will be replaced by blockist Isabel Pires, who was a deputy in the previous legislature and replaced José Soeiro in the current legislature, a parliamentarian who has since returned to the Assembly of the Republic.
Catarina Martins had already announced in an interview with Lusa on May 23 that she would no longer be a deputy at the end of the parliamentary term.
This announcement was made on the eve of the BE convention, in which the bloc member left the party leadership, now taken over by Mariana Mortágua.
In the interview with Lusa, Catarina Martins believed that there “doesn’t make much sense” to remain in parliament “not to already be a coordinator”.
After almost fourteen years as a deputy, the bloc leader said that despite leaving the BE faction, she would remain in the leadership of the party.
Catarina Martins was first elected as a deputy in the 2009 parliamentary elections and then as an independent on the BE lists, after being re-elected as a member in the following parliamentary elections.
The second term of the current legislature starts on September 15.
Source: DN
