(dr) CM Loures
Ricardo Leão, president of Loures City Council
Mayor of Loures appears in an article where he criticizes those who “favor populism” and “ignore the elephant in the room”.
Ricardo Leão wrote an article for the first time, in which he reacts to his own statements and to the entire case that was created around these words.
The president of the Municipal Council of Loures o eviction “without pity or mercy” for the tenants of municipal housing who have participated in the disturbances that have occurred in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area.
Two weeks after this public meeting of the City Council, Leão admits that this was “a least happy moment” and that he didn’t mean that, nor does he think so.
“But I can’t accept being condemned for a less happy phrase. Humanism, solidarity and inclusion are values that I greatly value and that have guided my personal, professional and political conduct. These are values that make me a man of the left“.
“But Being left-wing cannot mean sticking your head in the sand when it comes to more sensitive issues to manage”, continues the mayor, in the opinion article in the newspaper.
Ricardo Leão explains that one of these sensitive topics is the security. And here he mentions an elephant in the room: “Reconciling this value with solidarity, mutual aid and public social policies is the elephant we have in the room and which many, consciously, insist on ignoring”.
The President of the Chamber hopes that the left “have the courage” to address security – especially because “to continue ignoring is to hand over structural issues to the right and populism. We know very well that politics, like nature, has a horror of emptiness.”
In an apparent response to that of António Costa, José Leitão and Pedro Silva Pereira, the socialist activist (who never mentions names) thinks that combating populism requires firmness and answers, appealing to the PS not to shy away from this debate.
Further below, new warning: “I never stuck my head in the sand. I have a clear strategy that I put into practice three years ago and whose results speak for themselves: with responsibility, my team and I achieve what we set out to do. Only after doing this can we ask them to also comply with the municipality. It is with humanism and proximity that we work for inclusion.”
Ricardo Leão then highlights what the Chamber has done in the chapter on housing, with “hundreds of successful stories of people and families properly integrated into the community”.
And it guarantees that there is no longer the “push game of responsibilitiesin which citizens did not pay the rent, accusing the city hall of not cleaning up their houses or in which the city council assumed that it did not carry out improvement works due to non-payment of rent”.
Leão highlights that the Chamber works with people, that it has partnerships with different communities, leaving examples of what it has done “for the dignity and quality of life” of those who live in Loures.
