After all, separation of parishes must be annulled by Marcelo

The announced – and approved – reversal of the “Relvas law” would create (or recover) 350 parishes. But the President of the Republic has other ideas.

Deputies continue to deal with the separation, or recovery, from parishes.

The process has been going on at the Palácio de São Bento for months, to confirm a type of divorce that would create, or recover, .

It is a reversal of the so-called ‘Relvas law’, which in 2013 created dozens of Parish Unions that were separate – and many of them now want to be alone again.

150 separation requests reached the final evaluation, analyzed by the Technical Unit of the Assembly of the Republic.

O Parliament keep trying accelerate o process because the change has to be made, at least, six months before the next local electionswhich will be in September this year.

But there is a problem: Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.

The recovers a stance that the President of the Republic already had at the end of 2020: did not want changes within the municipalities less than a year before municipal elections (2021, in this case).

Now, and just eight months before the elections, Marcelo’s “coherence” remains, the same newspaper: does not accept changes of this kind in the year of municipal elections.

Even before becoming President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had said: “Do [uma] reform [desta natureza] less than eight months before local elections are called is always seen as a election campaign gesture or inevitably connection. To further imply structural changes in local authorities”.

And, even when he promulgated the diploma currently being processed, he warned that parishes could not be created six months before (or less) municipal elections.

A year in advance is not officially mentioned but, supposedly, and since the diploma was promulgated in 2021, by that time all changes would have already been made.

They were not, and in a year of municipal elections, parish separations can be approved in São Bento but rejected in Belém: Marcelo can veto the change.

Even if you don’t veto, you can to postpone: ask for constitutionality inspection or enact it only after March – and then the parishes would only be created after the municipal elections.

The President of the Republic wait to see the final law.

O Parliament continues its work without thinking about the president’s stance: “The president can veto the law, but the Working Group is aware that it did what it had to do”, comments Carlos Brás, PS deputy. “We did our part. I will not comment on the President’s positions. The president’s decisions are his alone and we have to respect them”, adds Olga Freire, deputy from the PS, both from the Working Group responsible for the process.