2023-12-17 07:09:50
The former Portuguese Minister of Infrastructure Pedro Nuno Santos will succeed António Costa as general secretary of the Socialist Party (PS) of Portugal after winning the internal elections with 62% of the votes of the militantsaccording to preliminary results.
Santos will be the new socialist leader by beating his two rivals, the Minister of Internal Administration, José Luís Carneiro (36% of the votes), and Daniel Adrião (1%), announced this Saturday the national secretary of organization, Pedro do Carmo , at the party headquarters in Lisbon.
Minutes before the results were announced, Costa had already sent a text message to the militants in which he congratulated his successor. “At this moment of passing the baton, I congratulate our comrade Pedro Nuno Santos, to whom I wish the greatest personal and political happiness,” wrote the acting prime minister and until now general secretary of the party in a message to the militants whom he had EFE access.
Santos, 46, will be the socialist candidate for prime minister in the legislative elections on March 10, after Costa resigned as head of the Government after being investigated in a case of alleged irregularities in lithium and hydrogen businesses.
The elected general secretary has been the visible face of the party’s leftmost wing for years and was long considered one of Costa’s ‘possible dolphins’. Under him he was Secretary of State for Parliamentary Affairs and Minister of Infrastructure, but he resigned from the latter position a year ago due to the payment of irregular compensation by the state airline TAP to an administrator. In addition, he led the negotiations with the left-wing parties that in 2015 culminated in a parliamentary agreement baptized as ‘geringonça’, which allowed Costa to reach the Government. During his campaign for the socialist primaries, he has defended a proposal based on promises such as strengthen the social state, recover the frozen seniority of civil servants, improve salaries and offer more affordable housing. Santos will be received this Sunday by Costa at the match headquarters.
Nearly 60,000 socialist militants They were called to vote in the internal elections that the PS held this Friday and Saturday. Looking ahead to the March elections, the new leader will officially start his campaign in Congress, which the political party will hold between January 5 and 7.
António Costa has been leader of the PS since 2014, and a year later he became prime minister, a position he has held continuously since then for three terms. The PS currently governs with an absolute majority in Portugal.
Large majority
Santos promised not to leave anyone behind and He asked for a large majority in the legislative elections to guarantee the stability of the country, without wanting to give clues about possible pacts to be able to govern. “We want to build a Portugal where everyone has a place, where no one is invisible or left for later,” he said in a long speech early Sunday morning at the party headquarters in Lisbon.
Santos, who will succeed Costa at the head of the PS, highlighted all the work carried out by the current acting prime minister during eight years of Government and expressed his intention to continue it, because there is still “a lot to do.” To achieve this, he wants a “great majority” of socialists in the legislative elections of March 10 to guarantee “stability” in Portugal, and did not want to anticipate possible future pacts with other political forces if they were necessary to govern. “We are going to work to have a great result and then depending on the parliamentary configuration we will try to find a solution to govern,” he said.
“Today I did not talk about any ‘geringonça’,” he insisted when asked by journalists, whom he assured that he would count on his predecessor in the electoral campaign and that he would take advantage of his “intelligence”, “experience” and “sagacity”.
The new socialist leader focused his speech on the central idea of his candidacy, “whole Portugal”, and left promises for the young, the elderly and women, among others. He also addressed companies, which the State should not “replace”, but rather be their “partner”, and was in favor of public, universal healthcare with a tendency to be free: “We want to save the National Health System (SNS),” he said.
The commitment to the social State will have to be reconciled with the “correct public accounts” and the reduction in debt levels, although he clarified that he does not want to “cut salaries, pensions or spending in the name of the fall in public debt.” Santos also defended that Portugal wants to be central in the European Union (EU), while remaining “critical”, because the bloc must “serve the citizens.”
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