The former Prime Minister and President of the Republic was the big surprise of the 41st PSD Congress, arriving this Saturday a few minutes before 8 p.m. at the municipal sports complex of the city of Almada.
The former Social Democratic leader’s presence was announced by Congress President Miguel de Albuquerque shortly after another of Luís Montenegro’s predecessors was the target of a huge ovation as she sat in the front row.
“The Congress warmly welcomes the former President and the great statesman of the 20th century Cavaco Silva, who greatly honors us with his presence. His political action is always an inspiration for the present and the future,” Miguel Albuquerque stated.
Cavaco Silva entered the room next to Luís Montenegro, who left the pavilion to join him, and with the ecstatic Social Democratic Congressmen, sitting next to Manuela Ferreira Leite and the mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas, who had just left a few minutes earlier spoken and ended with the challenge “we beat socialism in Lisbon, we will beat socialism in Portugal”.
In his closing speech, Montenegro left words of praise for Cavaco Silva. “His vision, honesty, social sensitivity, desire to give people the tool they need to realize their dreams in their lives… This legacy, this brand, is a reference and an inspiration for what we will do in Portugal . We will live up to his legacy in Portugal in the coming years,” guaranteed the PSD president.
For Montenegro, Cavaco has left behind the “greatest and deepest legacy of development that Portugal has known in the period after April 25.”
Montenegro says Costa and PS candidates are “peers of the same feather”.
The president of the PSD also stated in his closing speech that António Costa and the candidates for his successor are “pears of the same feather” and want to appear as victims in the election campaign, while they are “the hard core of it all”.
“They didn’t see it, they didn’t read it, they didn’t know it, they didn’t realize it: the fault must be with the right, the fault must be with Passos, from time to time the fault will even be with Cavaco,” said Luís Montenegro, which caused laughter and applause at the PSD conference.
In his second intervention before congressmen, the Social Democratic leader believed that António Costa and the PS successor candidates Pedro Nuno Santos and José Luís Carneiro – whom he did not name – were “the hard core of all this in the last eight years” goods.
“Some may now come with softer words, others with a megaphone in hand, but as the popular saying goes, they are all cut from the same cloth,” he charged.
Montenegro expected that the PS would want to appear as a victim of the political crisis during the campaign, despite this being “the third time that Portugal found itself in a quagmire situation”.
“The victims are Portuguese with problems in their daily lives,” he said.
Source: DN
