What caused Marques Mendes’ campaign to derail? “A scene of great violence”

Rui Moreira was directly involved in Luís Marques Mendes’ candidacy for the Presidency of the Republic. He was a national representative and claims to be fully aware of what went wrong.

The former president of Porto City Council thinks that the debate with Gouveia e Melo, on television, was the moment when Marques Mendes’ campaign derailed.

“He failed to convince the Portuguese that he was the best candidate,” he said Rui MoreiraTuesday, in statements to .

“I think there is a ‘before the debate with Gouveia e Melo’ and a ‘post-debate’. I think that, if the admiral in previous debates had appeared wearing glasses and with a script, in that debate someone convinced him that the best thing was to enter the room with a grenade”, analyzed the former Porto mayor.

“It was a scene of great violence”

Rui Moreira said, however, that this “grenade” not only harmed Marques Mendes, but also Gouveia e Melo’s own candidacy: “That grenade, in fact, detonated, caused irreversible damage to the candidacy of Dr. Marques Mendes, but it also caused his .

“So it was a scene of great violence and I think it was not possible to see Marques Mendes convince voters, who were, until then, aligned with him that, in fact, they deserved their trust”, added the national representative of the former social-democratic leader’s candidacy.

In the final calculations, Marques Mendes only got 637,394 votes (11,30 %) – o worst result ever for a candidate supported by the PSD in presidential.

Luís Marques Mendes, who gave the party the worst result ever, far behind Joaquim Ferreira do Amaral’s 34.54% in 2001.

Furthermore, it was well below the 31.21% with which the PSD won Legislative Elections took place a few months ago.