The former Chief of Staff of the Navy began by promising that, if he is elected President of the Republic, he will have “a constructive and institutional relationship” with the Government, but immediately afterwards pointed out that he heard “the Prime Minister’s statements with displeasure”.
The presidential candidate This Monday, he accused the Prime Minister of seeking to condition the Portuguese people’s choice in the elections and stressed that the next head of State cannot be either a puppet or in opposition to the Government.
Henrique Gouveia e Melo was speaking after visiting the Delta factory, in Campo Maior, Portalegre district, after being confronted by journalists with statements made by the president of the PSD and prime minister, Luís Montenegro, who included the admiral among the group of populist candidates for the next presidential elections.
The former Chief of Staff of the Navy began by promising that, if he is elected President of the Republic, he will have “a constructive and institutional relationship” with the Government, but immediately afterwards pointed out that listened “with displeasure to the Prime Minister’s statements”.
“I think the Prime Minister was in a bad way, because he cannot forget that, even as president of the PSD, he continues to be a Prime Minister. He cannot separate the two things. And he will have to live with the future President of the Republic, whoever he may be”, he warned.
But he went further: Luís Montenegro, according to the former Chief of Staff of the Navy, “he cannot condition the Portuguese to choose the President of the Republic who he thinks suits him”.
Then, in this context, he refused to be a populist, he once again defined himself as being positioned in the political center, defending a social economy. And he left indirect barbs to his opponents Marques Mendes and António José Seguro, although without naming them.
“Portugal needs a President who is an arbiter of the system, who is balanced. Being a puppet of a Government is not good for the system, especially because the Government does not even have an absolute majority [Notes:no parlamento] . But also trying to choose a person to go there to oppose the Government doesn’t seem like a very good thing to me either”, he maintained.
According to the admiral, in the race for Belém, there are “two candidates from the system: one who wants to go for President to help the Government; and the other who wants to go to say that, in some way, he contradicts the Government”.
“A President of the Republic has to be balanced and independent, but this independence is perfectly called into question, because what we have are truly partisan candidates”, he considered.
In a new indirect allusion to the social democrat Marques Mendes and the socialist António José Seguro, the admiral defined them as not both being supra-partisan.
“They can’t even have the full support of their parties. Therefore, they are not even able to achieve full support in the party and they want to convince the Portuguese population that they are non-partisan. They are not [Notes:candidatos] supra-partisans. They are truly a little color of the rainbow”, he concluded.
In front of journalists, Gouveia e Melo also repudiated the fact that Luís Montenegro had equated him with Chega’s president, André Ventura.
“The Prime Minister can call me whatever he wants, but I’m not what he wants to call me, because I’ve never been a populist and you journalists know very well that I say a set of things and adopt an attitude that has nothing to do with populism. I don’t say easy things”, he reinforced.
The admiral added that, throughout his life, he was never populist or radical, but, rather, “balanced, moderate and to the center”.
“In my entire life, if I hadn’t been moderate and if I hadn’t been balanced, perhaps many accidents would have happened throughout my career”, he argued in an allusion to his career in the Navy and as coordinator of the vaccination plan against Covid-19.
“I had to make very difficult decisions, at many times. And the most obvious proof, although I don’t intend to always talk about this, was what happened in the pandemic”, he added.
