Joana Amaral Dias believes “homeland is at stake”
At a time when the country seems increasingly ideologically divided, activist Joana Amaral Dias has presented her candidacy to the Portuguese presidency, declaring her adversaries to all be part of a failing system.
Declaring her intentions on Portugal Day, in Martim Moniz, Lisbon, Ms Amaral described the presidential elections (not due until January next year) as “a battle in which the country is at stake”.
Voters may still have the municipal elections (late summer) before they are faced with choosing a new president, but the pressure is building.
Ms Amaral’s discourse singled out the ‘favourite’ (so far) for the post, former Naval chief Henrique Gouveia e Melo, describing him as “the worst of the system”, when compared to the other hopefuls, PSD-backed former politician Luís Marques Mendes, and one-time leader of the PS Socialist party António José Seguro.
In Lusa’s words, “for Joana Amaral Dias, Henrique Gouveia e Melo came to protect the protected and is the ‘maximum exponent of the worst of the system, supported by war hawks and the arms industry’.
“He says he’s pro-life, but he’s the pro-death candidate,” she accused.
As for Luís Marques Mendes and António José Seguro, “they will not “stand up to” Gouveia e Melo, because they are “conditioned by the same agenda”.
“The Portuguese have no choice, the country is in lockdown. Friends, compatriots, all Portuguese people, there is no other option. It is my duty to tell you today: yes, Portugal, yes, Portuguese people, yes, here I am,” said Ms Amaral, representing the ADN party (national democratic alternative) and saying the plan is to build an alternative when the country is “staggering, stunned, disoriented, downcast, bewildered, without a present or a future.
“Around us, there are too many politicians and leaders who only want to manage the situation. Without an idea, without a vision, without a direction for Portugal”, she argued, accusing candidates of being “very well adapted to the war economy, to submission to Brussels, to globalist gangs and to internal collaborators”.
It was a very different speech to the ones being delivered in Lagos, but Ms Dias constructed it in a way to ‘put Portugal first’ on its national day: “Live or die. Continue or give up. Fight or give in. I am ready and fully dedicated to this which will be my and our final battle,” she said, on an improvised stage, where a Portuguese flag was flying.
Stating that the motto of her candidacy will be “bread, peace and freedom” and that “independence and sovereignty” are the “guarantors of these desires”, Joana Amaral Dias said that her first priority will be health. She intends to launch “a broad debate on promoting birth rates.
“We must quickly reverse the demographic winter, this demographic pyramid, the extinction of the Portuguese”, she told her audience, while she also pointed to an “audit of the State’s accounts, which would allow for cuts in superfluous expenses”.
Defending the need to develop the rail link between Portugal and the rest of Europe and promising to “confront the three biggest lobbies in the world” (the pharmaceutical industry, the “big food industry” and the “big health industry”), Ms Dias’ entreaty was to all those who are not yet committed to the three candidates who have already presented themselves to support her – “anticipating that, if she manages to get through to the second round, she will win the elections”, concludes Lusa.
If Ms Amaral were to be elected president of Portugal she would not only be the first woman in the role, she would be the first president who had posed naked for a magazine, at least twice. ND
