‘Movimento Gouveia e Melo Presidente’ registered for various products
Another strong indication that former Chief of Staff of the Portuguese Navy, Henrique Gouveia e Melo, will be announcing his candidacy for the Presidency of Portugal, comes in the news that the brand “Movimento Gouveia e Melo Presidente” has been registered, with his consent, at the national institute of industrial property.
According to Observador online, the retired admiral will be formally announcing his candidacy after the legislative election. But there is little doubt as to his intentions, particularly following the article that appeared recently, written by him, in Expresso.
Meantime, polls show he is still by far people’s preferred choice as Portugal’s next head of state.
SIC reports that the latest poll conducted by Pitagórica for CNN/TVI, Jornal de Notícias and TSF puts him a good 10 percentage points above the PSD choice of dyed-in-the-wool politician Luís Marques Mendes, a former PSD leader/ MP and long-time political commentator: the results put Gouveia e Melo clinching 35.9% of votes, Marques Mendes with 25.5%, António José Seguro (former PS Socialist prime minister) on just over 14%, and CHEGA’s André Ventura a tad below 13%.
In a scenario where António Vitorino is chosen as the PS candidate, the PS vote increases slightly, and Gouveia e Melo’s reduces to 32.3%.
But the bottom line of all the permutations is that Gouveia e Melo is always seen as winning hands-down – and if it came between him and Marques Mendes, 49% of people say they would vote for him, as opposed to 37% supporting Marques Mendes.
This is all the more interesting considering Luís Marques Mendes’ message, when he declared his candidacy in Fafe, that the president “must have political experience”. Gouveia e Melo has no political experience; his career has been a lifetime serving the country in the Navy – but the form in which politicians are seen these days, and the state of the country/ wider world, suggests voters may be open to a leader from a different walk of life.
Gouveia e Melo’s ‘star quality’ during the pandemic has not been forgotten. In fact, had it not been for the fact that he took charge of the (previously chaotic) vaccine rollout, and ran it spectacularly, no one outside the Navy might have heard of him.
The latest poll was conducted between February 23 and 26, and before the fall of the current government.
