José Luís Carneiro ‘lost’ to Pedro Nuno Santos in 2023
The unmitigated disaster suffered by PS Socialists (their third worst result in history, according to national reports) saw Pedro Nuno Santos ‘throw in the towel’ very late last night, and has opened the way to the man who lost to him in the leadership contest of 2023 but who was always much more likely to have been ‘a safe pair of hands’.
José Luís Carneiro was voted the ‘most popular’ minister during the second Costa administration. There has never been any whiff of scandal around him. He has not okayed an illegal golden handshakes over Whatsapp (and then forgotten all about it). He has never signed a government dispatch without the approval of the party leader. He has always been a solid, middle of the road Socialist, open to negotiations in difficult circumstances – something that will almost certainly be needed in the coming days as President Marcelo tries to engineer “the least bad option” for the country that, once again, has spoken but not definitively: there is no working majority for the government – and the possibility of a coalition with CHEGA has been consistently rejected by both AD (PSD and CDS-PP) and Iniciativa Liberal, the country’s other ‘party of the right’ and likely to enter into agreements with AD to help reinforce the government’s numbers.
Expresso today confirms that José Luís Carneiro will be standing again when internal elections take place at the PS’s national commission on Saturday.
In the meantime, the country is digesting the extraordinary results of last night: extraordinary in that PS Socialists are now on a par with right-wing CHEGA; both with 58 MPs each. For the PS this means it lost 20 MPs in these elections and 365,000 votes compared to the elections last year. For CHEGA it means that it gained eight MPs. As percentages go, the PS is still a hair’s breadth ahead of CHEGA, with 23.38% of the vote, as opposed to CHEGA’s 22.56% – but the writing is on the wall – and Pedro Nuno Santos last night had the decency to see it.
In his speech to supporters he said that he was “assuming responsibilities as leader of the party”, and thus calling for internal elections, for which he would not be a candidate.
It was not a humble speech, in that he continued with the refrain that Luís Montenegro is not “suitable” for the role of the prime minister, and that he, Pedro Nuno Santos, cannot support him, nor should PS Socialists. Photo: José Sena Goulão/Lusa
“As Mário Soares said, defeat is only for those who give up the fight, and I will not give up fighting. See you soon…”
As reports recall, throughout this long and bitter campaign, Pedro Nuno Santos insisted that he was leading his party to victory, and that all the polls were wrong. A leader that ‘out of touch’ really had no choice but to step down: PS Socialists ‘came first’ in only one electoral circle in the country (Évora) but can at least take solace that their candidates were elected in every electoral circle on the mainland which was not the case, in the end, with CHEGA or AD – the former failing to elect any candidate in Bragança, and AD suffering the same fate in Portalegre.
But the losses otherwise were huge for the left generally, albeit LIVRE did very well, managing to elect six MPs all told. Bloco de Esquerda was ‘humiliated’, losing all MPs except Mariana Mortágua, PAN stayed as it was before with just one MP, and CDU (PCP/ PEV) failed to increase its parliamentary bench as it had hoped, losing yet another MP, now down to just three.
This week will be focused on ‘strategies’, and how best AD can deal with winning without ‘winning’ real power. Some commentators believe the insistence on blocking any meaningful dialogue with CHEGA will have to be rethought. Indeed, Correio da Manhã editorial director general Carlos Rodrigues has commented this morning on how Luís Montenegro avoided answering questions last night about his famous “no is no” approach to CHEGA. “Is he changing his strategy towards Ventura”, he queries.
