A group of 25 members of the Liberal Initiative (IL) announced that they had stopped joining the party because the party had “become a caricature” of what it presented itself to be during the 2019 European and parliamentary elections, in which they stood for received parliamentary representation for the first time. . Among the signatories of the document “This is not what we were promised” are the former national councilors Diogo Saramago Ferreira and Nuno Carrasqueira or the municipal candidates Diogo Prates and Fernando Figueiredo.
“The proposal that the IL defended as paramount in its political action – the ruthless struggle against the PS and socialism and communism united – was softened and transfigured, through pure political calculation, namely electoral, with the IL gradually becoming a party of the regime became. , without characteristics or ambition,” reads the text signed by the 25 members, some of whom have already left the party led by Rui Rocha.
The path followed by the party’s executive committee contributed to the “deep disillusionment” of the 25 signatories, “the result of pandering to vocal minorities”, with “support and appeal to identity causes, in a ‘neither awake, nor anti-woke’. register, hand in hand with the agendas of the extreme left and the radical left.” But also criticism of the ‘absence of democracy in its bodies’ and other internal functioning problems.
The document ‘This is not what we were promised’ lists criticism ‘of the lack of meritocracy in the nomination and appointment of management positions, advisors and even candidates on the electoral lists, including current deputies’ as well as ‘favoring IL leadership candidates , from the beginning by the party machine,” referring to the way Rui Rocha was favored in the dispute with fellow deputy Carla Castro over the succession of João Cotrim Figueiredo. Almost all liberal deputies, including Cotrim Figueiredo himself, announced their support Rocha on.
This wave of withdrawals, which should be completed by November 25, follows another that took place on April 25, when National Councilors Nuno Simões de Melo and Mariana Nina were two of more than a dozen IL members they joined knocked. At the time, these elements, which were associated with the most conservative wing of the party, pointed as the final straw to the vote in favor and abstention of liberal deputies in bills by the PS and the Left Bloc respectively on party self-determination. gender identity of students in primary schools and kindergartens.
The choice of November 25 was justified by the signatories of the document as “the day when liberal democracy defeated the totalitarian left-wing dictatorship in Portugal”.
Source: DN
