José Coelho / Lusa
Chega’s president, André Ventura
At issue is the lawyer’s reasoning based on the absence of an updated list of the party’s national bodies in the last six years. This is what the law says.
To the request for the extinction of Chega, which, together with the Attorney General of the Republic, on various grounds, the lawyer António Garcia Pereira Days later, he added another justification for the complaint in which he asked the Public Ministry to request the Constitutional Court to abolish the party.
The jurist bases the request on the Constitution, which prohibits racist or fascist-inspired organizations, on the Political Parties Law of 2003 and also points out an alleged administrative violation: the absence of an updated list of national party bodies in the last six years.
However, experts in constitutional law consider Garcia Pereira’s reading potentially “abusive“.
Constitutionalist Carlos Blanco de Morais, consultant at the State Legal Center (CEJURE), reminds us that the law only requires the communication of these lists to the Constitutional Court, and not their validation. Despite several “failures” to Chega’s internal elections, the party has fulfilled the formal obligation to send updates to Ratton Palace. Thus, the condition that would allow extinction does not occur, he argues.
“The Constitutional Court decrees, at the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the extinction of political parties in the following cases: (…) Failure to communicate an updated list of holders of national bodies for a period exceeding six years”, reads the 2003 Law on Parties.
“What is at stake is communication and Dr. Garcia Pereira’s reading seems abusive to me at this point”, Blanco de Morais, who is a consultant at the State Legal Center (CEJURE), which provides legal support to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, tells the magazine Blanco de Morais.
Garcia Pereira’s is based on paragraph c) of the Law on Parties, which provides for automatic extinction when there is “failure to communicate an updated list of holders of national bodies for a period exceeding six years”.
In the complaint, the lawyer argues that the last list sent was from August 2019, exceeding the legal limit. However, in the last congresses, Chega presented requests for annotation and updating of the corporate bodies, even though these were successively rejected due to formal irregularities in the notices.
The Constitutional Court approved Chega’s internal elections, the most recent in October 2024, when it invalidated the vote held at the V National Convention, in Santarém. The decision resulted from a challenge presented by Fernanda Marques Lopes, one of the party’s founders, for alleged violations of statutory rules.
The party led by André Ventura will now have to call a new convention to regularize its internal structure. Although the risk of extinction due to lack of communication of updated lists seems removed, Chega continues to face a legal and political maze: its governing bodies in force date back to 2019 and include directors who have since been removed.
