Wants “fair and excellent” country; promises “seriousness, independence and action”
With 2025 very much the year of elections in Portugal, heavy hitters bidding for the presidency are already ‘presenting themselves’ even though the elections don’t happen until the New Year.
The summer will be filled with ‘party political posturing’ ahead of municipal elections in September/ October (date still to be confirmed), but that is not stopping ‘the race’ to replace two-term president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
In Caldas de Rainha over the weekend, former Socialist secretary-general António José Seguro officially presented his bid to lead the country, suggesting the state that Portugal is currently in is what has forced him out of self-imposed political exile.
Portugal needs change and hope, is Seguro’s message – and he is the figure with experience, seriousness and independence to power towards a “fair and excellent” country.
“It is for Portugal that I am running for President of the Republic”, he told the packed auditorium at Caldas da Rainha Cultural Congress Centre.
“I come with the desire to serve Portugal with seriousness, independence and action. I am free, I live without ties”, he added – suggesting political ideology will not mark his approach.
For now the Socialist party, still very much on the back-foot after crushing election defeat last month, has not said whether or not it will be endorsing Seguro as its candidate for the presidency, but this has not deterred the man ‘ousted’ from his position as secretary-general by António Costa, who went on to lead two governments before crashing out in a ‘scandal’ that to this day remains unresolved.
When he first declared his intention to stand as president, independently of what the wider PS party decided, Seguro said that what Portugal lacks today is “not just stability, it is trust.Trust in institutions, trust that those in power serve and do not serve themselves, trust that we will leave our children more than what we received from our parents (…) I believe that this is an election in which people express their conviction, their ideas, their vision of the country. And, therefore, I didn’t have to wait for anyone. I had to be myself.”
This far, Seguro is the only personality from the Socialist camp to have announced a candidacy for head of state.
António José Martins Seguro (the name has an apt meaning for the times, as it translates into ‘Safe’) was born on March 11, 1962 in Penamacor, Castelo Branco district. He holds a master’s degree in Political Science from ISCTE-IUL and a degree in International Relations from the Autonomous University of Lisbon. He is married and has two children.
After holding several public positions over the years – member of the government, MP and MEP among them – Seguro retired from political life after resigning as secretary-general of the PS, in September 2014, following the defeat in the primary elections against António Costa.
He dedicated himself to his university classes and his business, and remained almost silent on political issues over the last decade, with very rare exceptions.
In addition to Mr Seguro, former PSD leader Luís Marques Mendes, former Chief of Staff of the Navy, Henrique Gouveia e Melo, and activist Joana Amaral Dias have also presented candidacies for the presidential elections, to be held in January.
Source: LUSA
