PM faces PCP’s Paulo Raimundo; CHEGA faces PAN
Television debates for the snap elections on 18 May begin at 9pm this evening, with the first head-to-heads between AD and PCP, and CHEGA and PAN.
All told, there will be 27 debates between political forces with parliamentary representation, ending on April 28.
Tonight’s fixtures will be taking place on TVI (Luís Montenegro debating with Paulo Raimundo), and then an hour later, on RTP 3 (where André Ventura meets Inês Sousa Real) .
A final debate between the two main party leaders (Luís Montenegro and Pedro Nuno Santos) will be taking place in three weeks’ time (April 25).
In addition to the head-to-heads, there will be two debates on RTP, with all the parties with and without parliamentary seats (on May 6 and 8, respectively) and another on the morning of May 5, organised by Antena 1, Observador, Renascença and TSF radio stations during the official campaign with the leaders of the parties represented parliament. The official campaign runs from May 4 to 16.
All the debates will last 30 minutes (25 minutes for the two speakers, plus five minutes’ grace), with the exception of the last one between Montenegro and Pedro Nuno Santos, which will last 75 minutes and will be broadcast simultaneously on the three generalist channels (RTP/ SIC/ TVI).
President Marcelo has already considered that the pre-campaign TV debates for the legislative elections “could be decisive” in these elections, although there are fears that voters could simply be ‘saturated’ by politics, given the last elections were last year. And even then, there was a marked decline in viewers, given that the previous elections had also been little more than a year before.
These latest elections were announced by President Marcelo on March 13, two days after parliament rejected a motion of confidence in the government, which led to the resignation of the PSD/CDS-PP government.
There is some ‘bad feeling’ over the organisation of the debates (Luís Montenegro has put his ‘deputy’ defence minister Nuno Melo (CDS) in for some of the head-to-heads, which has not pleased the parties involved) and ADN, the National Democratic Party, has filed an injunction with the Lisbon Civil Court demanding that it be included in the debates, although it has no seats in parliament. ND
Source material: SIC Notícias
