In the late afternoon of January 22, a cold Sunday that turned out to be very hot in the Lisbon Congress Center, the weekend convention of the Liberal Initiative (IL) to elect João Cotrim Figueiredo’s successor took place. the most optimistic could swear that all would go well after a campaign that highlighted the internal divisions of a party force that had multiplied its parliamentary representation by eight less than a year earlier.

While the deputy elected by Braga Rui Rocha celebrated his victory at the convention with 51% of the vote, among the supporters of Carla Castro, who had just obtained 44%, despite there being no other member of the parliamentary group with her, and Thanks to Cotrim Figueiredo’s explicit support for her opponent, there were those who believed that the candidate would have all the conditions to continue her parliamentary work. And that, despite the exchange of accusations and the more or less admitted expressions of bitterness on both sides, the party would find a way to find possible unity for a legislature that at the time gave no reason to suspect that it would not last . until 2026.

Less than a year after that weekend at the Lisbon Convention Center, where almost all the key players of IL’s past, present and future participated – with the exception of former president and current deputy Carlos Guimarães Pinto, who stayed away from the succession process of her successor, Carla Castro is about to leave a parliamentary group that has become a foreign body, for reasons that have not been fully explained by either party. The deputy, who was no longer vice-president of the Liberal bank, declined the invitation to move from second place on the list for Lisbon to seventh in the same circle in the next parliamentary elections, with Vice President Ricardo Pais Oliveira said she might end up being Thursday or Friday.

Carla Castro, praised by the other banks, has said that she is considering returning to work in companies or teaching at a university, but her profile and experience have long given rise to the idea that she embodies the type of independent that embodies the social democratic leader Luís Montenegro. , wants to supplement the lists of the Democratic Alliance, a run-up to the elections between the PSD and the CDS, announced by the two parties on Thursday. For now, the IL delegate will not have received any formal contacts, but developments could take place in the coming days as the lists must be approved by both parties in early 2024 – when there are still about two months to go until the parliamentary elections on March 10.

Almost instant output

If further consequences could arise from a possible invitation to the woman who was about to become leader of the IL, the effects of the unease on the convention, marked by interventions in which more conservative elements denounced watermelons who were ‘red on the outside’, inside” could hardly have been more direct”, criticizing the wokism present in the interventions of many younger members, just as expressions such as “liberal across the board” gained fame among the other side of the barricade. A few hours after the work ended, Cláudia Nunes, candidate for the National Council on List B of the self-declared classical liberals, announced that she was leaving the party. The supporter of Carla Castro’s candidacy for the leadership of the Executive Committee wrote on social media that “tomorrow it would be hypocritical to carry flags and shout “liberal” in a group that has lost liberalism,” criticizing ” nepotism” and “caciquismo”.

For the symbolic April 25, the departure of a group of activists linked to the conservative wing was reserved, such as the first name on List B to the National Council, Nuno Simões de Melo, and also the national councilor Mariana Nina, pointing to the last straw being the facilitation by the liberal parliamentary group of bills from the PS and the Left Bloc on gender self-determination in schools. Accusing IL of “honestly denying that it is a right-wing party and wrongly denying that it is a left-wing party”, more than a dozen members knocked on the door, setting Simões de Melo on the path that set him would induce them to join. Chega on November 25.

Close to outside or almost

The members of the team that would form the Executive Committee if Carla Castro were elected soon became victims. From the beginning, the candidate for Vice President was Paulo Carmona, who was deputy of the parliamentary group until he took over the coordination of the deputy’s candidacy. The separation with the new leadership was always clear, and the manager – responsible for Sintra’s territorial core and candidate for the presidency of that authority – announced his resignation in May, when Carla Castro left the vice-presidency of the parliamentary group. .

Supporters of Carla Castro who were part of the previous Executive Committee, chaired by João Cotrim Figueiredo, such as Vicente Ferreira da Silva, who ceased to be a deputy of the parliamentary group after the convention that elected Rui Rocha, and Catarina Maia, the number of party two in the 2019 European elections, remaining as an independent deputy in the Maia municipal council.

As for the list for the Executive Committee led by Carla Castro, recent months, in addition to the departure of Paulo Carmona, who would have been Vice President for the South, have dictated the removal from party activity of elements such as Filomena Francisco. , who would become vice-president of the North, and the very recent elimination of former candidates for members Diogo Amaral and Orlando Monteiro da Silva, former president of the Order of Dentists and president of the National Association of Liberal Professionals.

New vacancy in November

After the start of the political crisis that led to the resignation of Prime Minister António Costa and the call for early elections, another 25 IL members announced their withdrawal, making a very negative diagnosis in the document: “This is not what they have promised us”. The signatories say that “a project that could in fact change Portugal” has “become a caricature of what it proposed in 2019”, accusing IL of “gradually becoming a party of the regime, without characteristics or ambition”. And abandoning accusations of “aggressive caciquism and persecution and violations against those within the party who think differently and do not adhere to the manual defended by the Executive Committee”.

Among those who left on November 25 were counselors Diogo Saramago Ferreira and Nuno Carrasqueira, as well as Diogo Prates, head of the list for Setúbal in the 2019 parliamentary elections, who has already joined Chega. They collectively supported Carla Castro in the leadership race, leaving little party activity. This is the case of IL’s first leader, Lisbon city councilor Miguel Ferreira da Silva, and former presidential candidate Tiago Mayan Gonçalves. And especially from some National Councilors who recently voted against the lists of candidates for deputies proposed by the leadership of Rui Rocha, headed by Rafael Corte Real and Cristiano Santos. Appearing on Lisbon’s list, albeit in an ineligible place, was Eunice Baeta, a municipal councilor in Sintra, one of the rare supporters of the soon-to-be former deputy who was not excluded from the legislative race.