Gouveia e Melo has been tipped as “unbeatable”
After many months in which he refused to confirm or deny whether he will be joining the ‘race’ to become the next President of Portugal’s Republic, former Naval Chief of Staff Admiral Gouveia e Melo has finally admitted: “my decision is to go ahead” – meaning, yes, he is in the running.
The man who rose from relative obscurity to a household name during the pandemic (because of his precision roll-out of the country’s vaccination campaign) has told Rádio Renascença today that if he is elected, he will have a “very different” approach to the job than the current incumbent, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
As pundits have remarked in the last few months, this is almost certainly what citizens want to hear.
“My decision is to go ahead with my candidacy for the Presidency of the Republic. It will be formally announced on May 29,” he said, stressing that he believes he can contribute with a “strategic vision” and in a “very decisive way to the structuring of policy in the medium and long term”.
Asked why he decided to run after ostensibly ruling it out two years ago, Gouveia e Melo says that ‘the world has changed a lot since then’ . He gave gthe examples of the war in Ukraine and the election of Donald Trump as US President.
“We are facing a new attempt to build a world order that could be dangerous, and could affect us significantly. Also, to some extent, some internal instability that has continued. All this has changed my mind,” he said.
“My way of acting will be very different from the current President”
“If the Portuguese consider that I have the conditions to be President of the Republic, my way of acting will be very different from the current President”, he added.
On the subject of the parliamentary elections, the former naval boss explains that the timing of the announcement in no way implies political intentions, but he admits to having the “expectation that the Portuguese will choose well what kind of governance they want for the future.
“The time for announcing my candidacy is getting short, because I need to send out invitations to the ceremony. And so it would be, as they say, a poorly kept secret. So I have this opportunity to say out loud that I’m really going to be a candidate,” he reiterated.
The news ensures the country will go straight from legislative elections into two further election ‘races’: the one for local government, coming late summer (date to be announced), followed by the one for the country’s next president.
As SIC remarks, “one of the worst-kept secrets in Portuguese politics, which had been talked about since the summer of 2023, has officially ceased to be a secret today”.
Source material: SIC Notícias
