Aiming to lead the party to 15% and break the bipartisanship, the deputy Rui Rocha became leader of the IL less than a year ago, with the stamp of João Cotrim Figueiredo and assumes he is combative.
Just over two years after joining the IL – he joined in August 2020 – Rui Rocha became the party’s fourth president, defeating deputy Carla Castro and national councilor José Cardoso.
The new president has always been very active on social networks, but in an interview with the Lusa agency, he said that he does not take Twitter “very seriously”, making sure that his interventions, on the contrary, show that he “takes politics very seriously” . “.
“But yes, I am a combative person. I am a person who likes battle, debate, evidence, discussion and therefore, yes, I am a combative person and I have a very big ambition,” he said at the time.
Before Rui Rocha headed the list for Braga in the 2022 snap elections, leading to his seat on the parliamentary bench, Rui Rocha worked in the campaign communications teams of former presidential candidate Tiago Mayan Gonçalves and the campaign to lawmakers.
Born in Angola, the new president is 52 years old, married with two children.
He holds a law degree from the Catholic University of Porto and was a visiting lecturer in International Private Law and Contract Law at the Modern University. He has worked as an attorney, legal counsel and director of human resources in construction, automotive, banking and specialty retail companies.
After integrating the executive committee of the outgoing IL, he integrates into the Assembly of the Republic the committees of Work, Social Security and Inclusion and Agriculture and Fisheries.
With the immediate support of the then outgoing President João Cotrim Figueiredo, Rui Rocha committed to a “new continuity”, retaining more than half of the previous executive committee and with the support of all the deputies who spoke out about this internal dispute .
Throughout the internal campaign – in which he searched the cores across the country and beyond – Rui Rocha wanted to focus on proposals for the country and on attacks on the PS and António Costa.
Despite wanting an internally strengthened and more capable party, the new president outlined a goal that he assumed was ambitious, which was for the party to get 15% in the next parliamentary elections, if they happen on schedule, because the goal is to to break the duality in Portugal to transform the country.
“I don’t want to tickle the system, I want to change Portugal. We are going to change Portugal,” he promised.
In an interview with the Lusa agency, Rui Rocha guaranteed that, as president of IL, any future agreement with the PSD will have a “specification specification” that, in addition to the country’s terms, vision, will make it clear that “there is no parallel PSD agreements with extremist parties” such as Chega.
Source: DN
