This is the third time that Pizarro has run for Porto City Council, the first being in 2013, the year in which current president Rui Moreira won the authority and assigned the Housing and Social Action portfolios to Pizarro, as part of a governance agreement. .
This Friday, the PS/Porto council elected, by majority, the former Minister of Health, Manuel Pizarro, as head of the party’s ticket to the Porto Chamber in next year’s municipal elections.
Pizarro’s candidacy was elected with 61 votes in favor, four against and no abstentions.
“Manuel Pizarro is the candidate who has the best conditions to lead a winning candidacy in 2025”, said, in statements to Lusa, the president of the socialist council, Tiago Barbosa Ribeiro.
Highlighting that the party “is united and determined to recover the Porto Chamber”, Tiago Barbosa Ribeiro stated that this was “an exemplary process” that allowed “a considered and timely choice”.
For the council leader, Pizarro is a candidate “capable of mobilizing the PS” and bringing people together.
“Porto needs a transformative municipal project, led by the PS, but that goes beyond it, involving the entire city”, he maintained.
The choice will now be forwarded to the PS Porto District, which will meet on December 17th to approve the names of candidates for the district’s local authorities.
This is the third time that Pizarro has run for Porto City Council, the first being in 2013, the year in which current president Rui Moreira won the authority and assigned the Housing and Social Action portfolios to Pizarro, as part of a governance agreement. .
In the 2017 municipal elections, Rui Moreira’s movement refused the PS’s support for his re-candidacy due to an alleged attempt to interfere in the places that the socialists would occupy on the list, which led the PS to present Pizarro as a candidate.
Since 2001, the year in which Nuno Cardoso lost the elections to the social democrat Rui Rio, the PS has not been at the forefront of the municipality’s destiny.
Manuel Pizarro was born in 1964 in Coimbra, but has always lived in Porto, the city where he was a doctor at the Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de São João and clinical director of the Hospital da Ordem da Trindade.
On a political level, Manuel Pizarro was chosen in 2022 as Minister of Health, a position he held until 2024, having been responsible for creating the Executive Directorate of the National Health Service (SNS) and the Local Health Units (ULS).
Between 2008 and 2009 he was Secretary of State for Health and, between 2009 and 2011, Deputy Secretary of State for Health.
He was an MEP between 2019 and 2022, and president of the Portuguese socialist delegation in the European Parliament, replacing Carlos Zorrinho in the position.
Manuel Pizarro has multiple scientific publications on his CV in the area of his specialty, namely on hypertension and autoimmune diseases.
He was a PS deputy in the Assembly of the Republic (2005-2013), having been a member of the Parliamentary Health Committee.
The Porto Chamber is currently led by the independent Rui Moreira, who will not be able to run again due to reaching the term limit allowed by law.
Municipal elections should take place in the second half of 2025.
In Portugal there are 308 municipalities (278 on the mainland, 19 in the Azores and 11 in Madeira) and 3,092 parish councils (2,882 on the mainland, 156 in the Azores and 54 in Madeira).
