The list of candidates for deputies of the Liberal Initiative, presented by the executive committee chaired by Rui Rocha, was approved yesterday during a National Council during which disagreements within the party were felt. Ultimately, the document received 51 votes in favor (including 25 votes from the Executive Committee itself), two abstentions and 11 votes against, from critics of the leadership such as Cristiano Santos, Pedro Antunes and Rafael Corte-Real.
The candidate proposal was voted on globally, with the internal opposition confident that some of the Executive Committee’s choices would have faced greater obstacles – even if leadership would have been virtually impossible due to the severity of the inherent constraints – if the issue had been drawn up district by district. One of the biggest controversies has been Aveiro, where university professor Mário Amorim Lopes, deputy in the Porto city council, comes forward, criticizing the practice of ‘parachuting’, despite praising the profile of those who should do it. on Haven’s list. Aveiro’s territorial centers will react poorly to the choice, with threats of demobilization during the election campaign. And the choices for the Viseu Circle, in which Hélio Marta is advancing, and the Coimbra Circle, in which the executive committee chose the independent economist Pedro Brinca, were also poorly received by some party members.
As expected, the National Council also debated the departure of Carla Castro, who won 44% of the vote in January in the leadership battle with Rui Rocha. The current deputy for Lisbon, a district for which she was second on the list in the 2022 parliamentary elections (only behind then-leader João Cotrim de Figueiredo), did not accept the ‘demotion’ to seventh place, which gives rise to the clues about her deep divorce of the rest of the parliamentary group.
In one of the interventions on this subject during the National Council, which took place yesterday in Leiria, former national leader Rafael Corte-Real, who supported Carla Castro at the last convention, made a derogatory comparison with the current deputy for Porto, Patrícia Gilvaz. , and to the likely future deputy (and current chief of staff of the parliamentary group) Mariana Leitão, who leaves a question: “How can we continue to say that we are the party of meritocracy if, as number two in Porto, we are without any professional experience, are we adding a number two in Lisbon who, despite her potential, has neither the professional career nor the political recognition of Carla Castro?”
The same national advisor, despite recognizing Rui Rocha’s “courage” to continue running for Braga, and praising Bernardo Blanco, who will top Lisbon’s list in the next parliamentary elections, as a “supposed future leader of this party’, urged the leader to “quantify IL’s electoral objectives”, namely to demonstrate whether the seventh place for Lisbon offered to Carla Castro was an eligible place or not.
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The lists of alternates left all current members of the parliamentary group in potentially eligible positions, with the exception of Carla Castro and João Cotrim de Figueiredo, who will pass through the Circle of Emigration in Europe before leaving the IL list to the Lead the European Parliament.
In Lisbon, after Bernardo Blanco and Mariana Leitão, the next places will be occupied by the current parliamentary leader, Rodrigo Saraiva, and by the Lisbon city councilor, Angélique da Teresa. If the party elects more deputies for Lisbon than in 2022, the next will be André Abrantes Amaral, Bruno Mourão Martins and the independent Graça Canto Moniz.
In Porto, former leader Carlos Guimarães Pinto remains at the top of the list, followed by Patrícia Gilvaz, Albino Ramos and João Ambrósio, while the influential Pedro Schuller is relegated to seventh place on the list.
With Rui Rocha in first place for Braga, seconded by Olga Baptista, and Joana Cordeiro again at the top of the list for Setúbal, with Jorge Teixeira in second place, there are other circles in which IL may have ambitions to choose, if the electoral elections receives reinforcement compared to the last legislative one, are those of Leiria and Santarém.
In the case of Leiria, Miguel Silvestre will be head of the list, candidate for the Chamber of Alcobaça in the 2021 municipal councils and director of the Óbidos Technological Park for seven years, with the party president appointing him as someone with “deep knowledge of the entrepreneurial fabric ” and the “social reality of the neighborhood”.
Postponed until July 2024, the Statutory Convention, in which many members hoped that the possibility of all members of the Executive Committee having voting rights in the National Council would be ruled out once and for all, which would prevent any decision contrary to the leadership makes difficult. .
Source: DN
