The PSD bank’s first vice president, Ricardo Baptista Leite, will suspend his deputy mandate in May to head an international organization that advances research into artificial intelligence and digitization for health.
A statement to Lusa said the deputy – in parliament since 2011 – will take over as executive director at I-DAIR, based in Geneva, on May 22 and suspend his mandate in parliament from May 17. , still serving as an opposition councilor without portfolios, on the Sintra City Council.
“It is with great pride and a sense of responsibility that I have assumed the functions of Deputy of the Assembly of the Republic, in the last four terms. I have always understood that we must face the exercise of functions of political responsibility with detachment and that we should not depend on the positions we hold,” he justified the deputy, in the communique.
The first ‘vice’ of the social-democratic bank and party leader for Lisbon in the last legislature he stressed that it was “a personal decision”, which PSD President Luís Montenegro had already communicated.
The deputy stressed that being a deputy is “a mission, not a career”: “It’s been 12 very intense years that make me proud, but I feel it’s time to focus on my professional career,” he added.
Ricardo Baptista Leite said he had already handed over the health strategy to the National Political Commission and stressed that he will “suspend the deputy’s mandate so that he has enough time to get promoted” until his replacement of the positions of first vice president of the parliamentary group and in the parliamentary committees to which he belongs.
“I have also communicated that I will maintain the commitment to Sintra, as an opposition councilor, non-executive, i.e. without portfolios, and that I will remain available to work with the party at the national level. I will also my academic positions, as well as volunteering as chairperson of the ‘UNITE Parliamentarians Network for Global Health'”, mention.
According to the Statute of Deputies, the temporary suspension of the mandate for family, personal, professional or academic reasons can only take place for a maximum period of six months per legislature, after which the parliamentarian must resume his duties or permanently resign.
Born on May 31, 1980 (aged 42), Ricardo Baptista Leite first assumed the mandate of Deputy in the XII Legislature (in 2011), for the constituency of Lisbon, a position for which he was successively re-elected to the current legislature, during which member of the parliamentary committees on Health and Foreign Affairs and Portuguese Communities, the latter as alternate.
He is a doctor by profession and currently Scientific Coordinator of Public Health at the Institute of Health Sciences, Catholic University of Portugal, and visiting lecturer at the NOVA Medical School, at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, as well as Deputy and Councilor without Portfolio at the Municipality of Sintra.
Ricardo Baptista Leite was a vice-chairman of the PSD bank with the previous three parliamentary leaders – Rui Rio, Adão Silva and Paulo Mota Pinto – and with the current one, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, he was appointed first ‘vice’.
During the covid-19 pandemic, he was almost always the face of the PSD at the end of meetings with epidemiologists at Infarmed and on March 13, 2020, in parliament, he made a dramatic appeal to the Portuguese to “cancel everything and come home “, emphasizing that this was “not a time for political debate”, but for unity.
In January 2021, the Prime Minister Baptista Leite even accused, “in the field of health”, of having been involved in a campaign to denigrate the external image of the country, along with Social Democrats Paulo Rangel and Miguel Poiares Maduro during the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union, which led the PSD to announce criminal charges against António Costa.
The organization’s chairman of the board of directors, Christoph Benn, announced the selection of Ricardo Baptista Leite as I-DAIR’s new CEO, “after a long and rigorous international selection process”.
Source: DN
