The CDS-PP President he reiterated that the party will not give formal support to any of the candidates in the second round the presidential.
The president of the CDS-PP, Nuno Melo, appealed to vote “in conscience” in on the 8th. In the closing speech of the CDS-PP municipal convention, in Porto, the leader of the Christian Democrats, Nuno Melo, said he wanted to “explain a little better” the party’s position regarding the second round of the presidential elections, recalling that Chega argues that on February 8th it will be at stake as to who is “on the side of socialism or on the side of those who fight socialism”.
“You are not right-wing or left-wing because you say you are right-wing or left-wing, and Chega really defends tax increases and a State that gives everything to everyone, which normally only happens with taxpayers’ money, so with that hand in the pockets of those who work, and I know that there is no more socialism than this”, said Nuno Melo.
Reiterating the position conveyed during the Executive Committee week that the CDS-PP “will not have any organic commitment, nor any institutional commitment” in the second round of the presidential elections, Nuno Melo insisted that the party will not give “any formal support” to former PS general secretary António José Seguro or to Chega’s leader, André Ventura.
Centrist leader criticizes Ventura for trying to buy CDS headquarters in 2023
However, he recalled the moment he assumed the presidency of the party, in 2023, when “one of the candidates today in the second round of the presidential elections [André Ventura] he called the press with supposedly seven million in his pocket, from who knows where, saying he was going to buy” the national headquarters of the CDS-PP, “in a square that is not for any reason called Adelino Amaro da Costa”, the former centrist minister who died in the plane crash that also killed Francisco Sá Carneiro.
Nuno Melo also added that André Ventura took this position “with the same lightness”, with which, for example, “a leader of a country in the free world today says that he will buy a territory in the Arctic against the will of his nationals and his population”, in a reference to the statements made by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, about Greenland.
“We are not the right that the left likes, but we are also not the right that populists take advantage of”, highlighted the Minister of National Defense, warning that any “social media dynamics” can generate “great support and many ‘likes’ from the PS or Chega”, but will not “add a vote to the CDS”.
Nuno Melo also considered it “normal” for the CDS not to support “a socialist candidate”, referring to António Seguro, considering that he was “at that point where Doctor Paulo Portas was, in 1998, when in the 16th Congress” of the Christian Democrats he said that “the ideological opponent of the CDS is socialism and the political opponent of the CDS is the PS”.
But, he continued, “the world has changed and political or party reconfiguration” also forces “to adapt what is a new reality”.
Still refusing any intention of “giving voting instructions” for the 8th, Nuno Melo ended up telling the audience to vote “in conscience”, for “whoever they think is less bad” or “even, if applicable, for whoever they think is reasonably good” or even “in any of the other ways that in democracy are also allowed, because they are expressed in a vote and in a ballot box”.
“Do as you wish, but never forget, none of us who are in this party are bigger than our party, they are bigger than the CDS. That’s why we are here and it’s for the CDS that we fight every day”, he highlighted.
The centrist leader did not make any statements to journalists at the end of the intervention.
With LUSA
