The openness shown in recent days by the president of the PSD, Luís Montenegro, in negotiating a pre-electoral coalition, reinforced Nuno Melo’s belief that the CDS will again have deputies in the Assembly of the Republic in 2024. Although centrists believe they have all the conditions to restore lost parliamentary representation in 2022, even if they rely on their own lists.

This was one of the key comments during the staff meeting held at CDS headquarters last week, with former leaders, former deputies and other figures associated with the party’s past and present, as well as independents, expressing “great optimism” about the coming elections. The dozens of participants in the two meetings, held on Monday and Wednesday evenings, both in the presence of centrist President Nuno Melo, Vice President Paulo Núncio and Paulo Portas, have long committed themselves to the fate of the party. led for 16 years, “spoke freely” about the position and programmatic lines to be presented to voters.

“The CDS is clearly positioning itself as part of the solution to the crisis once again caused by the collapse of the PS,” Paulo Núncio summarizes to DN, presenting the centrists as “a social right” that seeks “an active role to play.” of the alternative that will be created after March 10.”

In view of the progressive electoral exodus in the 2019 and 2022 legislatures, with 564,000 votes and all mandates lost since 2011, the last time the CDS voted alone with Portas in the lead, the obstacles to recovery include the call for a useful voice. in the PSD, if there is no coalition, and competition from Chega and the Liberal Initiative. To achieve this, according to Paulo Núncio, centrists will rely on strong ideas, such as defending the reduction of the tax burden on families, attention to the aging of the population and the need to ‘make the social state efficient’, namely the National Service Health and public schools, which they say have been destroyed by the PS.

Another argument of those who see themselves as “the right that is needed” and which, as Nuno Melo has reiterated, “no one has replaced in Parliament”, is that of the competence and credibility with which the CDS claims to distinguish itself from Chega and the Liberal initiative. “It is essential that there is a party that is not just protest or niche voices,” the vice president said.

Assets for the PSD

Stability is another “fundamental line” that centrists want to emphasize regarding the two parties that multiplied the number of votes and deputies in the 2022 parliamentary elections, with the most recent polls showing them even better results in the next elections. “Chega and the Liberal Initiative have completely failed the test of the Azores,” accuses the CDS vice-president, referring to the impending fall of the center-right government of social democrat José Manuel Bolieiro “due to the irresponsibility of these parties.”

The centrists contrast this with their history of coalitions with the PSD, both in the past, in the governments of Sá Carneiro, Pinto Balsemão, Durão Barroso, Santana Lopes and Passos Coelho, and in the present. The two partners not only serve together in the regional governments of Madeira and the Azores, but also manage municipal chambers such as Lisbon, Cascais, Braga, Aveiro, Coimbra and Funchal.

Although Luís Montenegro is still in the phase of informal contacts, under the leadership of Nuno Melo there are increasing signals that the Social Democrats want to implement the pre-electoral coalition. First of all, because the PSD president has raised the bar and said that he will only become Prime Minister if he wins the parliamentary elections – an objective to which the CDS can make a decisive contribution in a scenario where the two largest parties are very much in the problems are there. close to. And if Pedro Nuno Santos confirms his favoritism in the internal elections of the PS, the former Minister of Infrastructure and the Social Democratic leader could play the leading role in a media duel between the leaders of the list for Aveiro, where the centrists have a valuable asset as they exceed the national average of votes in a district where the CDS holds three of the six municipal councils that it governs alone.

But the advantage of the PSD forming joint lists with the CDS is, in the opinion of the centrists, also associated with the deputies that the center-right can also choose, since the party has ‘a set of cadres with quality and experience’. that no other right has.” The staff meeting was attended by former ministers Paulo Portas, Assunção Cristas, Pedro Mota Soares, Luís Nobre Guedes and Miguel Morais Leitão and former secretaries of state Adolfo Mesquita Nunes (who left the party) and João Pinho de Almeida. From what DN discovered, these and former deputies – Ana Rita Bessa, Cecília Meireles, Diogo Feio, Hélder Amaral, Isabel Galriça Neto or Nuno Magalhães participated – some assured that they were ready to join the lists of candidates even if there were no coalition is.

Unity with boundaries

Highly emphasized by the centrist leadership was the demonstration of unity that translated into the presence of former leaders Paulo Portas and Manuel Monteiro at the first meeting, while Assunção Cristas attended the second meeting. Nevertheless, two other former presidents were left out: José Ribeiro e Castro and Francisco Rodrigues dos Santos.

The president of the CDS guaranteed that both were invited and refused to attend for agenda reasons, but Ribeiro e Castro prefers to say that he was questioned and guarantees that much needs to be done to heal the wounds that the CDS left led to the lowest position. vote ever. “The unity of the party depends on a meeting between Nuno Melo and Francisco Rodrigues dos Santos. Unfortunately, this has not yet been worked on,” he lamented in statements to DN.

For Ribeiro e Castro, who chaired the CDS between 2005 and 2007, in an interregnum between long periods of leadership by Paulo Portas, the party must consider itself “moderately right-wing, but steadfast in its values, without being radical or extremist.” . And because he believes there are conditions for a return to parliament, he argues that the CDS should move forward alone because “by occupying its land it limits Chega’s growth.”

Hecatomb of 2022 showed that there is life beyond São Bento

Participation in the regional governments of the Azores and Madeira, as well as in some local authorities, has helped to forget the absence of the Assembly of the Republic.

When Francisco Rodrigues dos Santos finally recognized the electoral catastrophe of the CDS, António Costa celebrated in the early hours of the day after the parliamentary elections on January 30, 2022, the absolute majority of the PS, which promised to condemn the centrists to four and a half. Years of absence from the main stage of Portuguese politics. The consternation at Largo Adelino Amaro da Costa was justified, as even the majority of polls did not expect the party to elect no deputies for the first time.
The unprecedented absence of São Bento determined the succession of Rodrigues dos Santos, with Nuno Melo becoming inevitable as he received the relative media attention of the European Parliament. And it raised concerns among activists that the party was doomed.

What is certain is that the terrible result in the 2022 parliamentary elections, where the CDS had 89,113 votes and 1.6% of the total (more than the PAN and Livre, which elected separate deputies due to the concentrated voters in the Lisbon circle ), took place in contrast to other elections that brought responsibility and power to the centrists.

After decades of absolute social democratic majorities, 2019 marked the arrival of the CDS to the Madeira regional government as a coalition partner of the PSD, with Rui Barreto taking over the regional secretariat for the economy, which was retained after the 2023 elections. in the Azores it was in 2020 that the CDS had a decisive intervention in the ‘apparatus’ with the PSD and the PPM that led the social democrat José Manuel Bolieiro to put an end to decades of socialist dominance, with the centrist Artur Lima as vice president of the executive branch that must now fall, after taking charge of the regional budget. But the PSD-CDS-PPM coalition will present itself with joint lists at the next elections.

Also in the 2021 municipal elections, in addition to maintaining the six chambers in its own name (Albergaria-a-Velha, Oliveira do Bairro, Ponte de Lima, Santana, Vale de Cambra and Velas), the CDS found itself in the centre-right position. biggest victories, starting in Lisbon, where Filipe Anacoreta Correia became vice-president, after the coalition led by social democrat Carlos Moedas defeated socialist Fernando Medina, with about forty local authorities in which the party shares governance with the PSD. On the other hand, in Porto, the independent Rui Moreira was re-elected, with the support of the CDS and the presence of councilor Catarina Araújo.