Expresso reports this morning that PS leader José Luís Carneiro – the man who stepped into the space left by the resignation last summer of Pedro Nuno Santos (following the PS’ catastrophic election result against AD) – is seizing on the ‘victory’ of António José Seguro last night to call the necessary internal elections that would legitimise his leadership.
“Next Saturday (January 23), a meeting of the national commission will be called – the highest body between congresses – which will mark leadership elections for the second weekend in March (14 and 15), with a congress on March 28 and 29,” says the paper.
The national commission will also discuss the presidential elections and what it means to have its preferred candidate in the second round. Carneiro has already called for all “democrats, humanists, social democrats and Christian democrats, to get behind António José Seguro to make sure he is the man who walks into Belém Palace on March 9 as the new president of the Republic.
“What is at stake is very important. On the one hand, we have a democratic vision, on the other, a vision with autocratic tendencies. On the one hand, deliberation and balance, on the other, turmoil and imbalance, and even disruption and the desire to break with fundamental achievements since 1976,” he claims.
José Luís Carneiro also confirms that had Seguro not reached the second round, but the PSD’s preferred candidate had, his party would have supported the latter – in order to ensure André Ventura does not win the highest political office in the land.
Is he expecting reciprocity (which the prime minister has seemingly already dashed)? Another champion of measured words, Carneiro tells Expresso: “The PS said what it was going to do and made it clear what it would do in a second round between a democratic candidate and an autocratic candidate. The others will do what their conscience dictates.”
For the time being, José Luís Carneiro is the only candidate standing for leadership of the PS party – just as he was after the disastrous election results last summer. But that doesn’t mean he will be the only candidate – nor that the party will vote him back. This has always been the ‘unknown’ – whether a bigger fish in the party (Fernando Medina? Alexandra Leitão?) might suddenly loom into the picture and snap up the top job for which José Luís Carneiro has only ever been seen as a ‘safe pair of hands’.
Source: Expresso
