“Portugal cannot hold elections every year”
Centre-right stalwarts gathered in Lisbon today for the 51st anniversary of the PSD, giving two grandees of the party a platform in which to appeal across the ballyhoo of electioneering for stability, finally.
Stability has always been the word trundled into the picture in times of looming crisis. This/ that should or should not happen because Portugal ‘needs stability’.
The truth is that stability has simply been a word for the last few years, not a reality – hence why the country is going to the polls for the third time in three years with eight parties with representation in parliament talking essentially at cross-purposes.
It was in this context that former PSD leaders Manuela Ferreira Leite and Luís Marques Mendes, issued their appeals.
The pair were the first to arrive at the PSD anniversary lunch today which brought together other former party leaders in a private manner at the PSD national headquarters.
Current party president and prime minister (at least until the elections on May 18) Luís Montenegro, received the former leaders as some – namely Pedro Santana Lopes, Fernando Nogueira and Aníbal Cavaco Silva – chose not to speak to gathered journalists.
Manuela Ferreira Leite, Luís Marques Mendes (a candidate for the country’s presidential elections in January) and former PSD prime minister José Manuel Durão Barroso seized the moment, however; the former saying: “I believe that people are clear-sighted enough to know that it is not possible to make the country progress in a situation of permanent instability. Therefore, they will have two choices: either vote for AD (the PSD/CDS coalition) or enter a situation that makes any stability impossible”.
Marques Mendes took a less frontal approach: “This is how families celebrate their birthdays and the family comes together at these moments”, he said of the occasion. “I lived through the founding of the party 51 years ago. It was an extraordinary thing – and this is a special moment”.
Cutting to the chase, he then said: “In these elections on May 18, a large proportion of Portuguese people will vote mainly with stability in mind. People are concerned about the lack of stability and I understand that a large proportion of the votes, as perhaps never happened in the past, will be with stability in mind”.
If the elections result in a solution that provides conditions for political stability, then it will be “an act of lucidity on the part of the Portuguese people”, he said. “And for a very simple reason: The country cannot go through elections year after year. It absolutely cannot. With an international context that is difficult, uncertain and unstable, we must not import more instability than we already have. We must not add instability to the instability that comes from abroad,” he added.
Asked if he would give Luís Montenegro advice during lunch for the rest of the legislative campaign, Marques Mendes, who used to have a weekly slot in which he gave astute political commentary, immediately responded: “No, my part as a commentator is over.”
Lusa’s report today did not mention Marques Mendes’ anguish when elections were scheduled, suggesting that, in his opinion at least, not enough had been done to avoid the political crisis that ‘came out of nowhere’ and plunged the country into weeks of time-consuming electioneering.
As for Durão Barroso – a man who left the leadership of the PSD to lead the European Commission – he simply described the qualities needed right now in a prime minister: “personal integrity, governative experience, competence and political capacity” – qualities he said that his friend, Luís Montenegro, “has already clearly shown that he has”.
This was a ‘PSD moment’: we will have to go through many other political moments between now and May 18, with certainly opportunities for other parties to extoll the virtues of their candidates. ND
Source material: LUSA
