The president of the CDS-PP this Sunday drew boundaries regarding the Liberal Initiative and Chega, stressing that the Christian Democrats maintain relations with the PSD “in more than 40 chambers and in the autonomous regions of Madeira and the Azores”.
In the closing session of the XXVth Congress of Popular Youth, which took place in Cascais, Nuno Melo implicitly referred to the recent luncheon between PSD and IL presidents Luís Montenegro and Rui Rocha.
“I don’t worry about lunches at all, because we have lunch every day with PSD people in more than 40 rooms, in the autonomous regions of Madeira and the Azores, and personally I often have lunch with PSD Members of the European Parliament, with whom I have already campaigned or with whomever I was opposed,” said Nuno Melo.
The issue had been raised by the JP’s re-elected leader Francisco Camacho – who said he had recorded who the PSD had lunch with – and prompted the CDS president to leave a council.
“Politics is much more than lunches, politics is work, we’re going to earn all the lunches, all the votes, not because they give us a hand, but for what the ballot boxes are worth, not because we’re vulnerable, but because we work”he claimed.
Nuno Melo devoted part of his speech, which began with an attack on the PS government, to outlining the differences that separate the CDS from IL and Chega, in a call to voters who have voted for these parties so that they can return to the space of Christian democracy.
With regard to IL, the chairman of the CDS stressed that they are not a right-wing party, they are not a “modern CDS”, and that, with the exception of his view of the role of the state in the economy, “it is closer to the BE than any party in Portugal”.
As examples, he pointed to the position of liberals in defense of the legalization of cannabis, the “commitment to the legalization of euthanasia” or in the field of “gender ideology”.
As for Chega, Nuno Melo even said he struggled to classify it as a conservative right-wing party.
“The conservative right is institutional, even if it disagrees, it doesn’t chatter when it’s in front of heads of state. The conservative right doesn’t put a fence around the headquarters of other parties,” he said, recalling that the CDS-PP has faced a situation of siege during a 1975 congress at the Crystal Palace (in Porto), and rejects extremist views.
The chairman of the CDS-PP also accused the leader of Chega, André Ventura (without naming him), of contradictions in their European relations: “We will not attack Putin on Sunday and then we will go arm in arm with Salvini on Monday” , he criticized.
Nuno Melo, still in relation to Chega, drew attention to the Catholic electorate, which was the party that recently asked for a parliamentary hearing with the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon on sexual abuse in the Church, saying that “it opened the door to parliamentary unrest” from an institution that – which condemns all acts of pedophilia – should also be commended for many other aspects of its social intervention.
“The CDS is missing from the Assembly of the Republic,” he concluded, calling for the return of all those who left or stopped voting for the party.
Nuno Melo acknowledged past mistakes and guaranteed that he will not waste a “second” talking about internal issues, at a congress where he arrived accompanied by former president of the CDS-PP Manuel Monteiro and by current and former leaders such as João Almeida , Nuno Magalhães, Paulo Núncio, Pedro Morais Soares or Isabel Galriça Neto.
Francisco Camacho, re-elected JP leader for another two-year term, highlighted the deterioration of the parliamentary discussion since the CDS-PP was no longer represented – in the 2022 legislature – and some criticism of the president of the republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, either for the maintenance of the government or for not “taking advantage of her conscience” and having enacted the decriminalization of euthanasia.
Along the same lines, Nuno Melo also said that he agrees with the diagnosis of the President of the Republic in what he classified as a “very serious political crisis” related to the maintenance of the government of the Minister of Infrastructure, João Galamba.
“The only thing that failed was the conclusion, which could only be: and therefore I dissolve the Assembly of the Republic and call early elections,” he defended, assuring that the CDS-PP will be prepared when the parliamentary elections take place “in three months or three years’ time”.
Source: DN
