Portugal’s bitter presidential campaign – almost certainly the most bizarre in the country’s history of democracy – shows no sign of calming for the final three weeks of street rallies and potential vote-catching.
The campaign director of Luís Marques Mendes – the normally unflusterable PSD candidate and a long-standing presidential advisor on the Council of State – has taken to social network ‘X’ since the heated ‘head to head’ with former Admiral of the Fleet Henrique Gouveia e Melo to accuse his client’s adversary of ‘slander and populism’.
“Gouveia e Melo specialises in talking badly of LMM (Luís Marques Mendes). He has no useful discourse, in despair with the polls he is obsessed with the strength of LMM. Let him continue on his path of slander. We are not here to respond to populism. Our concern is to speak to the country,” writes Duarte Marques.
On his own X feed, however, ‘LMM’ has shown there is a desire to ‘respond to populism’ (more habitually the sphere inhabited by CHEGA candidate André Ventura).
His latest post (admittedly written before Christmas) refers to Gouveia e Melo’s ‘mask’ having fallen in the damaging final debate due to his making insinuations, “which is not politics”.
Marques Mendes’ focus regarding Gouveia e Melo – since the start of this electoral campaign – has been the former admiral’s unsuitability for the highest political office in the country, due to his lack of political experience.
Gouveia e Melo, for his part, continues to stress that all he seeks is transparency (in this case, transparency in Marques Mendes’ business dealings).
“I just reminded everyone what Dr Luís Marques Mendes’ profession is – apart from being a political commentator. That was the question I asked: what interests does that profession leverage, or can leverage, within the presidential office? I think all Portuguese people want to know that,” he told journalists on the campaign trail in Madeira.
Refusing to be seen as attacking anyone, Gouveia e Melo stressed that he believes his questions (which were not answered) were what “all Portuguese people want to know (…) exactly what (LMM) does, how he does it, who he does it with. These are normal things,” he said.
And while all this is happening, the spotlight has momentarily swung from its usual position over CHEGA candidate André Ventura. Thus Mr Ventura is now “appealing” to President Marcelo to postpone the Council of State (announced just before Christmas and ostensibly to ‘discuss the situation in Ukraine’). Few appear to have taken the scheduling of this final Council of State of Marcelo’s mandate on face value. It cannot seriously be to discuss ‘the situation in Ukraine’ – albeit it does appear to centre on Marcelo’s ‘frustrations’ that certain positions and statements have been taken and made by the prime minister (about a number of things, Ukraine included) that the head of state feels should first have been ‘aired’ with himself.
The problem (for André Ventura) with calling a Council of State nine days before the presidential elections is that both Ventura and Luís Marques Mendes sit on it – and will therefore be expected to attend on a day when both would otherwise be out canvassing for votes.
Accusing Marcelo of “simply interfering” in the electoral campaign, André Ventura says the date of Friday, January 9 is “not tolerable”. It should happen after the first round of voting on January 18. But if it does take place on January 9, Mr Ventura wants all those involved to take stock of Marcelo’s 10 years at the helm, to analyse “the place he has led Portugal to on the international stage”.
With little of this being upbeat, former PS Socialist heavyweight Augusto Santos Silva (himself once tipped as a presidential candidate), has delivered perhaps the pièce de resistance. Santos Silva remarked when Socialist António José Seguro first threw his hat into the ring for the presidency that Seguro didn’t possess the ‘minimum requirements’ for a President of the Republic. Now, months later, Santos Silva has said that ‘of all the candidates currently in the running’, Seguro is the one that comes closest to presenting the requirements for the job. A compliment? Or a withering indictment of the playing field, struggling and bickering with each other in the desire to reach 50% of the country’s vote?
Source: Correio da Manhã/ Observador/ ‘X’/ SIC Notícias
