The former Minister of Internal Administration (Interior) of Portugal José Luís Carneiro, has been proclaimed this Saturday winner in the primary of the Socialist Party to choose a new Secretary General. His profile is that of a moderate progressive with government experience, which has been part of the executives of the European Council, António Costa.
Faced with the figure of his immediate predecessor in the leadership of the Socialist Party (PS), which belongs to the left wing of the force and was Minister of Infrastructure (2019-2022) of Costa, Carneiro, 53, offers a more proposal of center far from stridency and great gestures.
As he himself described in this Saturday’s speech where he was proclaimed general secretary, he is a “comprehensive, humanistic and determined person, with firm, serene and quiet personality.”
Santos and became for the first time in his history in the third political force in Parliament behind the Ultra -rightist Chega group.
The voters punished Santos and the PS after they will refuse to support the motion of confidence presented by the executive of Montenegro last March following the publication in the press of the existence of a company in the hands of the Prime Minister’s family.
Carneiro is now erected in the general secretary of the PS after primary schools in which he has not had rivals, since he has been the only candidate who has postulated. He is endorsed having been Minister of Internal Administration between 2022 and 2024, and Secretary of State for Portuguese communities between 2015 and 2019, in different coastal governments.
Born on October 4, 1971, he has a degree in international relations, with a master’s degree in African studies, and in the past he has also been a deputy and mayor of the municipality where he was born, Baião (North). Within the PS it has been deputy general secretary between 2019 and 2022.
It was not the first time that Carneiro presented himself to the internal elections of his party: in 2023 he was defeated by Santos, who obtained 62 % of the votes, compared to the 36 % he achieved.
Although until today his election has not been confirmed, Carneiro was already in charge of intervening on behalf of his party during this month in the Parliament on the program of the Executive of Montenegro, who proposes less taxes, more police officers in the street and proposals to limit immigration. Although he has criticized the anti -immigration measures, the PS voted against the motion of censure promoted by the communists to the government program.
On immigration, the socialist argues that “it is not a national public security problem” and that today the country is safer than when he had a service of foreigners and borders, dismantled in 2023 when he was a minister after death three years before a Ukrainian in custody, and that now the Centroderechar executive wants to reintroduce as a special unit of the Public Security Police. In addition, he has warned that alterations to the Nationality Law to close doors to immigrants who want to undertake Montenegro could be unconstitutional.
As for the tax decrease that the conservative executive has put on the table, Carneiro sees it as “positive”, although he has warned that his goal must be more social justice.
One of the people who have described his style of doing politics is the president of the PS, Carlos César, who these days remembered a few words that he himself wrote about Carneiro in the preface of one of the books written by the former minister. César pointed out that the now elected secretary “being well distant from those politicians who vocalize everything that happens to them and with a natural sobriety, is distinguished, and thus continues, by the proximity to people in the various functions he has performed.”
