Only about 130 votes, out of a total of 1,728 voters, made the difference on Sunday at the Liberal Initiative’s VII National Convention in Lisbon, where deputy Rui Rocha was elected the party’s new leader. Rocha won with 51.7 percent of the vote – that is, about 890 votes – but his main competitor, also deputy Carla Castro, took 44 percent (about 760 votes). Businessman José Cardoso’s third copy received no more than 75 votes (4.3 percent).
In other words, even though the party is now split in two, congressmen voted for the candidate who came forward with the explicit support of the outgoing leader, Deputy João Cotrim Figueiredo (who remains a deputy and now participates in the work of the parliamentary commission of Constitutional Revision). ).
In the dispute before the National Council – the party’s “parliament”, where the different factions have seats, according to the proportional method – Rui Rocha’s list also won, but without a majority, with 24 seats out of 50. The other 26 mandates were divided among four lists, most of which were those of party founder Miguel Ferreira da Silva (14 elected). In the vote on the sectoral motions, 11 of the 12 submitted proposals were approved. The failed motion defended the removal of pages and profiles of young liberals from the Internet.
In the afternoon, the congressmen witnessed a very lively confrontation between more liberal lines (in customs) and other liberal lines in economics, but conservative in customs. For example, Nuno Simões Melo, head of the B-list of the National Council (CN), criticized the fact that the IL embraced left-wing causes. “We must let the activist minorities speak”, “I do not trade our ideas for gender or Marxist ideology”, “we cannot be a blue watermelon, liberal on the outside and bloquist on the inside” – these were some of the sentences that he was told.
In response, Congresswoman Sandra Pimentel took the stage and directly attacked Simões Melo’s speech: “You are mistaken, you are in the wrong party. I will use the liberalometer, liberalism will never be conservative.” Another congressman was equally bold: “We are against stale conservatives who try to curtail individual freedoms” and “even some libertines are welcome here, even those who are and didn’t know it”.
15 percent in legislation
After the votes were counted, the new leader, Rui Rocha, took the stage to deliver the closing address of the convention.
Cotrim Figueiredo’s successor has recommitted to the Liberal Initiative’s target of 15 percent of the vote in the next parliamentary elections, the only way, he said, to “end the dichotomy” in Portugal.
Considering that “the PS government is completely exhausted and politically dead and we were the ones who declared it with the motion of censure”, Rui Rocha believed that it is up to the Liberal Initiative to “lead the opposition”.
For internal consumption, he rehearsed an internal reconciliation speech: “For the avoidance of doubt, in thanking Carla Castro and José Cardoso, I count on all liberals without exception. All who want to participate in the future of the Liberal Initiative. In the future of the initiative liberal, you are all welcome, we are all liberal, we are here to change Portugal,” he said.
“I want to ask Luís Montenegro from here, what else should happen to vote in favor of the Liberal Initiative’s censure motion?”
Before taking the stage to close the convention, he had already stated that the role that the defeated candidate Carla Castro will have in the party “is the one she has today and everything she wants to do within the possible participation in the party “. “The past ends today at IL, today we open a new page of growth, only the future of IL matters,” he said in short statements to journalists, among many hugs with supporters.
The PSD was also in the crosshairs of the new party chairman. Rui Rocha directly questioned the leader of the PSD, Luís Montenegro, namely because the Social Democrats did not vote for the motion of censure that the IL has tabled against the government: “I want to ask Luís Montenegro from here what would happen more to to vote for the motion of censure of the Liberal Initiative?”
However, it didn’t stop there. He also questioned the position of the Social Democrats on the constitutional reform already being discussed in parliament: “I would also like to ask Luís Montenegro from here whether he will be on the side of freedom or on the side of this constitutional reform side of the side of those who want to deprive the Portuguese of liberty.” As promised, IL will “take to the streets” in February to fight against the revision of the Constitution.
Source: DN
