AD focused on municipalities voting their way
With the State of the Nation debate over – and all the mutual insults now settled like dust where they fell – leader writers are digesting the essential: that the government was/ is focused on reaping Brownie points ahead of October’s municipal elections.
Thus the largesse handed out to pensioners and teachers (teachers are to receive a monthly allowance to compensate them for being placed away from their home addresses. It will vary between €150 to €450 per month, depending on distance, and only come into effect from January 2026), and the cuts to corporate taxation rates.
“AD does not want to run the risk of falling into a political swamp by losing in the municipal elections”, explains Correio da Manhã’s editorial director general Carlos Rodrigues, and so it is giving its support to ‘independents’ who look like they have a good chance of winning against Socialist opponents.
Examples of these tactics are the support the government is giving to Isaltino Morais, for example, in Oeiras, and Manuel Marreiros, in Aljezur, in the Algarve. Morais was, once upon a time, a PSD politician, but Manuel Marreiros has never been: he has stood for PCP communists, and PS Socialists. Now he is ahead of the independent ‘Renascer’ initiative that means to ‘revive’ the long-standing Socialist municipality. Equally, the government is supporting the former communist mayor of Setúbal, who is now running as an independent in a similar ‘reviving initiative’ to that of Aljezur: ‘Setúbal de Volta’.
CM’s leader writer also highlights the prime minister’s “very intelligent” way of dealing with CHEGA – the party the PM initially said, in the early days of AD’s first election, that he would not be ‘including’ in any form of power-sharing. This ‘absolute assertion’ is now is looking less ‘definite’, as throughout the debate CHEGA leader André Ventura referred to an agreement his party has with AD, to the enormous vexation of left-wingers, who tried to make as much political capital out of the change in AD’s approach as possible.
“Finally, the leader of the PS seems to have realised that he has to ride into battle”, adds Rodrigues. All the careful words about PS Socialists being available for constructive dialogue with the government etc. have moved up a notch to a discourse where José Luís Carneiro simply heaps scorn on the perceived unworthiness of CHEGA (and the arrogant/ swaggering posture of its leader), seeking a “place in the sun of the leadership of the opposition”.
This, however, is where Rodrigues seems to doubt that the new Socialist leader has the necessary requisites. The party has never seemed ‘fully behind’ the choice of José Luís Carneiro – and he is certainly no ‘António Costa’.
Meantime, who does have all the ‘chutzpah’ of an emerging leader is the PS candidate for leadership of Lisbon City Council, Alexandra Leitão (she has actually said it herself) – and she has already lined up a left-wing coalition that threatens to topple the fragile leadership of the current PSD administration under mayor Carlos Moedas.
Source material: Correio da Manhã/ Lusa
