Twenty-five members of the Liberal Initiative (IL) announced their departure from the party because they felt the party had “become a caricature of what it proposed in 2019.” This new wave of exits, including the former National Councilors Diogo Saramago Ferreira and Nuno Carrasqueira, the former candidate for the Chamber of Viseu Fernando Figueiredo and the former head of the list of Setúbal Diogo Prates, is justified in the text: “This was not the case”. what promised us”, which DN had access to, due to the “deep disappointment” with “a project that could actually change Portugal”.
“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 and ambition,” argue the 25 signatories, who spare no criticism of Rui Rocha’s leadership. “It is clear today that the path followed by the party, as a result of pandering to vocal minorities, consists of supporting and evoking identity causes, in a register of ‘neither woke nor anti-woke’, hand in hand with the agendas of the far left and the radical left”.
Accusations of divergent political orientation had already led to a first wave of resignations on April 25, when national councilors Nuno Simões de Melo and Mariana Nina, from IL’s most conservative wing, and who supported Carla Castro in the succession of João Cotrim Figueiredo , were among more than a dozen rooms. The “last straw” was the approval and abstention by liberal deputies, respectively, of bills from the PS and the Left Bloc on gender self-determination in primary and nursery education.
“Because of the ‘red lines’ policy regarding Chega, the liberal initiative is part of the problem rather than part of the solution,” says Diogo Prates, IL dissident
The elements who will withdraw until November 25, which they describe as the “day when liberal democracy defeated the totalitarian dictatorship in Portugal”, criticize the “absence of democracy” in IL. They point to “a climate of aggressive caciquismo and persecution and violations against those within the party who think differently and do not adhere to the manual defended by the Executive Committee.”
Speaking to DN, Diogo Prates cited another reason for the departure as an “opacity” that does not make it clear how many IL employees and what salaries they earn. But also the recurring issue of the inherent votes of the Executive Committee members in the National Council and the ‘flimsy excuse’ for the postponement of the legal convention due to early parliamentary elections.
On the other hand, the policy of ‘red lines’ regarding Chega is something that leads the founder of the Setúbal and Almada territorial centers to conclude that ‘IL is more part of the problem than of the solution’, because it is ‘a governance problem.”
The voices in the IL defending coalitions with the left, as happened in Germany, and the lack of position regarding Javier Milei’s victory in Argentina worry Diogo Saramago Ferreira, but among the group of dissidents it is not clear that a switch to another party. “There is no political project in Portugal that unequivocally represents a liberal and alternative position to socialism,” says Nuno Carrasqueira, while Fernando Figueiredo concludes: “I have already given it to these championships.”
DN tried to get a response from the Executive Committee of IL to the arguments of the 25 signatories of the document “This is not what they promised us”, but this was not possible at the end of this edition.
Source: DN
