André Ventura requests “utmost secrecy about situation”
The leader of Portugal’s far-right party CHEGA, André Ventura, has announced in a letter to MPs that he will be running in the 2026 presidential elections on behalf of the party.
According to the letter, Ventura asks MPs for “the utmost secrecy about the situation” (a request that was clearly either not heeded, or not intended to be taken seriously), saying he will announce his candidacy on February 28, at 8 pm, at the Jerónimos Monastery in Lisbon.
“The reasons are diverse, but are essentially related to the need to have a candidacy that represents the space of the anti-corruption and anti-immigration Right without confusion with the politicians who have defended the opposite all their lives and now want to appropriate our political space,” the same letter reads.
As all news media have remarked, this decision brings forward Ventura’s previously intimated intention of announcing whether he would be running “by the end of March”. But then again, this was ostensibly only meant to be an ‘internal announcement’ to the (50) MPs in his own party.
His letter adds: “This candidacy, with risks, also aims to prevent some people from having our support by disdaining our party or letting it be known that they don’t like the CHEGA brand” – very possibly a reference to the likely candidacy of former Chief of Staff of the Navy, retired Admiral Henrique Gouveia e Melo, who is not keen in any way to be aligned to any political party.
“We are not for sale, nor do we accept giving up our votes and our support to anyone who doesn’t want, deserve or rejects our support,” Ventura goes on.
The upcoming presidential elections “will be particularly important for the affirmation of CHEGA as an alternative form of power in Portugal”, he considers.
“Finally, this candidacy is justified by the current context of insecurity in Portugal: we need a president of Portugal who is not afraid to say that he is on the side of the security forces, the police and the magistrates in the fight against crime”.
André Ventura ran for president in 2021 – coming third behind Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and former PS Euro MP, Ana Gomes. According to data from the General Secretariat of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the CHEGA president won 11.9% of the vote (translating into 496,773 votes).
Source material: LUSA
