Pedro Nuno Santos dedicated his homeland to his homeland last night and, as a stage for Wednesday in the internal campaign of the PS, planned a meeting with activists and supporters at the Casa da Criatividade in São João da Madeira. Less than two kilometers away are the Tecmacal facilities, where a lesser known facet of the journey of someone who was leader of the Socialist Youth, councilor, deputy, state secretary, minister and hopes to become Secretary General of the PS and Prime Minister took place place. . But it became even more topical as the former Minister of Infrastructure launched his candidacy to succeed António Costa with praise for business owners who were seen as trying to break away from the image of a left-wing radical by introducing themselves to the Portuguese as a ‘grandson of a shoemaker and son of a businessman’.
News because of the 0.5% share recently no longer held by Pedro Nuno Santos (see box) and, before that, because of the controversy surrounding the government contract signed with the Footwear Industry Professional Training Center, worth 129,210 euros, Tecmacal is dedicated to the production of machines for the shoe industry, created by the father of the former minister, Américo Augusto dos Santos, and his partner, Fernando Laranjeira. And even a son with notable political ambitions is unlikely to miss the experience of working alongside his parents, as is so often the case in family business groups.
Pedro Nuno Santos’ first period at Tecmacal took place after obtaining his degree in economics from a Higher Institute of Economics and Management that had not yet adopted the English-speaking suffix Lisbon School of Economics & Management, in a professional experience that lasted until 2005 , when He was first chosen as a vicar. He combined it with the final phase of his long consulship with the Socialist Youth, where he surrounded himself with many of those still closest to him politically and personally, namely the Minister of Environment and Climate Action, Duarte Cordeiro.
Regarding the functions he performed as assistant to the board of directors chaired by his father, who in revolutionary times was a member of one of the factions of the far-left PCP(ml) group, Pedro Nuno Santos revealed to DN that the most An important project in which he was involved was the implementation of the quality management system. Any salary negotiations or other labor issues with the company’s employees were outside the company’s activities.
In defeat and in the troika
He would return to Tecmacal years later, in 2010, after suffering one of the biggest defeats of his political career. The attempt to win the Chamber of São João da Madeira in the 2009 municipal elections against the social democrat Manuel Castro Almeida – who had succeeded the historical centrist Manuel Cambra – failed. José Sócrates imposed the rule that local candidates would not be included on the lists of deputies in the parliamentary elections held two weeks earlier.
Between 2010 and 2011 he returned to the company of which he was a minor shareholder, like his sister, and in whose share capital his mother, Maria Augusta Leite de Oliveira Santos, daughter of the man who allowed Pedro Nuno Santos to present himself in Largo do Rato as the grandson of a shoemaker. And if he returned in 2011 to the lists of deputies of the circle of Aveiro, whose socialist district federation he had chaired the year before – until 2018 – the victory of the PSD and the coalition with the CDS-PP that governed the Pedro Passos Coelho Portugal under the tutelage of the Troika and was concurrent with a third stint at Tecmacal.
From October 2012 to November 2015, when he became Secretary of State for Parliamentary Affairs in António Costa’s first executive, as articulator of the apparatus that allowed the minority PS to govern with the support of the Left Bloc, PCP and PEV, Pedro Nuno Santos He was again assistant to the company’s administration headed by his father. Regarding what he did, in a paid professional activity which he guarantees was compatible with the mandate of deputy on a non-exclusive basis, he explains that the work “consisted of monitoring the affairs of the company and contribute to the decisions of the administration”.
Let it happen in dialogue
Much less succinctly in answering DN’s questions, he showed that he is the candidate for PS leadership in terms of the lessons he learned from his management experience. “I have witnessed firsthand the difficulties of small and medium-sized entrepreneurs. The daily struggle to obtain orders, improve the quality of their product and distinguish themselves in the market, in order to survive and develop,” he says remembers.
From the lessons he learned from the years he worked in the company founded by Américo Augusto dos Santos, who was still a man of the left: in the 2019 municipal councils he was the last deputy on the PS list led of the mayor of São João da Madeira, Jorge Sequeira, re-elected for a new term – since he owns a Maserati, Pedro Nuno Santos states that “the capacity for initiative, resilience in the face of adversity and the ability to achieve things are the lessons were that I learned.”
He guarantees that he intends to take advantage of what he has learned about “the importance of making it happen, of implementing and achieving it” and “of always trying to do this in dialogue, consultation and with the involvement of everyone” if he is the next Prime Minister of Portugal. To do that, he will have to be elected general secretary of the PS in the elections on December 15 and 16, defeating current Interior Minister José Luís Carneiro and the usual opposition leader Daniel Adrião. And then lead the party to victory in the parliamentary elections on March 10, 2024, a mission on which the strategy appears to be aimed at expanding its appeal to the center.
Source: DN
