2024-01-07 19:55:00
The new general secretary of the Portuguese Socialist Party (PS), Pedro Nuno Santos, was officially sworn in on Sunday by members of the party of resigned Prime Minister Antonio Costa, marred by a matter of influence peddling.
The resignation of Costa, in power since the end of 2015, led to the call of early legislative elections for March 10.
“We have the enormous responsibility of writing a new chapter in the book of the PS governments and the development of the country,” declared the new leader of the Portuguese left, 46, in his closing speech at the congress, which brought together the militants of his party in Lisbon, in the presence of Costa.
Coming from the left wing of the PS, this trained economist had played a key role in Costa’s first government, as Secretary of State for Parliamentary Affairs, in charge of relations with the radical left parties that allowed the socialists to come to power. with the aim of “turning the page” on the austerity policy applied until then by the right.
Portugal plunged into a political crisis in early November after a series of arrests and searches led to the indictment of Costa’s chief of staff and his infrastructure minister in a case of influence peddling.
At that time, the Prosecutor’s Office reported that the head of Government was the subject of a separate investigation and immediately announced his resignation, specifying that he would not seek a new mandate.
According to information published on Friday by the Observador media, he would be implicated in acts of prevarication, suspected of having participated in the development of a territorial planning law that benefited a company that planned to build a mega data center near the port of Sines (southwest). ).
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