The admiral will retire shortly after the end of his term, on December 27. From January onwards, he must make efforts to prepare his candidacy for the Presidency of the Republic.
The Chief of Staff of the Navy, Admiral Henrique Gouveia e Melo, promised this Tuesday to “never talk about the Navy again” after finishing 45 years of military duties this month and moving into a “new phase” of his life.
“It’s time to close one chapter of my life and start another. I’ve been in the military for 45 years. It’s time to leave the Navy in younger hands, better able to continue a future that is a future we all want,” he said the military chief of the Navy, who spoke to journalists on the sidelines of a ceremony at the branch’s central facilities, in Lisbon.
Like , Gouveia e Melo will move to the reserve shortly after the end of his term, on December 27, considering that “it doesn’t make sense, after leaving the Navy, to continue with a shadow in relation to the Navy”.
“The Navy will have a new chief, it will have a new leader, it has every right to make the choices it wants. And I, the day I leave the Navy, will never talk about the Navy again, because that is a matter of who is active. There are a lot of people who leave and who we say were very reserved on active duty and very active on reserve. I’m going to try not to do that”, he anticipated.
Life enters a “new phase”
Gouveia e Melo stated that he will move on to a “new phase” of his life, but without specifying which one, at a time when his name is mentioned as one of the possible candidates for the 2026 presidential elections.
Faced with the journalists’ insistence about his future, Gouveia e Melo responded with irony: “You gentlemen see something extraordinary in all my actions. I don’t know if I can blink, because if I blink my eyes it could also have some meaning” .
“The only thing I can say is that I’m going to finish 45 years of service. It’s time to close one chapter of my life and start another”, he insisted, expressing his conviction that his successor in the field “will be an excellent Head of State -Major of the Navy”.
Confessing that he will leave “his heart inside the Navy” and that the last day will be “the saddest” of his life, Gouveia e Melo spoke of two feelings, leaving his future open.
“The first feeling is of loss, of loss of a life. The second feeling, the future will mark it, I don’t know yet”, he concluded.
