The Juntos Pelo Povo (JPP) party, founded in Madeira and legalized in January 2015, is now preparing to participate for the first time in the Azores in the regional parliament elections scheduled for February 4. This was the only relevant innovation in the process of forming the competing lists, a process that ended yesterday, after the period for submitting these lists to the court had expired.
The JPP can now advance to the Azores thanks to Chega’s rift in the legislature, which is now coming to an end. During the last regional legislature of the Azores, in October 2020, André Ventura’s party managed to elect two deputies (out of a total of 57): José Pacheco (from the São Miguel circle) and Carlos Furtado (from the compensation circuit).
It turned out that there was an internal rift. Furtado became an independent deputy, while Pacheco remained in the party. Now Carlos Furtado is again a candidate for regional deputy, but he heads the JPP list in the circles of São Miguel and compensation.
The list will be sponsored by Carlos Melo Bento, a history of the independence of the Azores and founder of the PDA (Democratic Party of the Atlantic), now extinct. Furtado has already said that the JPP’s expectations in these elections are “quite ambitious”: “We plan to be the third force in the regional parliament. There are conditions for that.” In Madeira – where the party was founded – the JPP is the third largest force, with five deputies out of 47, after the PS (11 elected) and the PSD/CDS coalition (23). In the Azores the belief is that it can hardly be that strong, partly precisely because it was born in Madeira.
On February 4, the Azores will have to fill in a ballot paper with six parties (PS, PAN, Chega, BE, IL and JPP) and two coalitions (the CDU and the PSD-CDS-PPM coalition). The election of 57 regional deputies is at stake: 52 distributed over the nine island circles and five over the compensation circle (a circle where all votes from the island circles that have not elected anyone are ‘deposited’).
In the PSD-CDS-PPM coalition, the current president of the regional government, José Manuel Bolieiro, will again lead the São Miguel Circle (the largest of the nine island circles). The Corvo circle will be led by the leader of PPM-Açores, Paulo Estevão, and the São Jorge circle by Catarina Cabeceiras, from CDS-PP. Artur Lima, leader of the CDS-Açores (and current president of the regional parliament) will again be number 2 in the Terceira circle.
The campaign in the Azores could also be the setting for the first joint appearance of the leaders of the PSD-CDS national coalition that is being prepared, Luís Montenegro and Nuno Melo respectively. However, if it is confirmed, it should be a fleeting appearance.
Contrary to what is happening in the national coalition, the Azores coalition between social democrats, centrists and monarchists has not and will not establish a ‘red line’ against Chega. Just as Chega was called upon to reach an agreement with Bolieiro in 2020 (which it later broke), it could do the same again in 2024, if this is necessary to form a majority in the Regional Parliament.
Source: DN
