Bebiana Cunha, PAN parliamentary leader
More than three dozen PAN activists, including activists, mayors and national and regional leaders such as former deputy Bebiana Cunha, formalized their disaffiliation from the party this Saturday, the party itself confirmed to Lusa.
The former PAN parliamentary leader, Bebiana Cunhais one of more than three dozen activists from PAN / People-Animals-Nature who announced this Saturday their party disaffiliation.
“For me, when there is no longer ideological coherenceI come to the conclusion that it doesn’t make sense. I am faced with the impossibility of remaining affiliated with a party that, in my opinion, distorted his ideas“, said Bebiana Cunha.
“Em 2011 PAN talked about ‘Giving value to values’therefore bringing ethics to politics and, in my opinion, this project failed. I cannot consciously remain associated with a project where quantity becomes more important than quality”, added the former PAN deputy.
Speaking to the Lusa agency, Bebiana Cunha, a PAN volunteer since 2011, who was mayor of the Porto Municipal Assembly and elected parliamentary leader of the party in 2021, began by saying that “This was not a decision taken lightly or from one day to the next”, summarizing the reason for using the word “disillusionment”.
“I think there is disillusionment among us with a projectwith a political ideology as ethical as the PAN. Seeing it distort in various coalitions, based on the idea that what is important is quantity over quality”, he said.
Asked about How do you evaluate the current leadership? of the party, Bebiana Cunha lamented the “lack of self-criticism” on issues such as loss of electorate and representation, considering that “there is a denial of reality”.
“One lack of in-depth analysisjust like the PAN, which ideologically was a party that defended deep ecology and started to defend surface ecology”, he said.
These disaffiliations come after a statement was released in July open letter also signed by the former PAN deputy and other former leaders asking for an evaluation of the party leadership “without fear of having to change”, accusing the current leadership of deviate from “founding values”.
In total 35 signatories, which included the former leaders Anabela Castro, Nuno Pires, Miguel Queirós or Carolina Pia, highlighted that everyone “has their story within the PAN” and recalled the laying of the foundations of the project People-Animals-Nature politician in 2009.
In the statement released this Saturday and signed by five now former PAN militants, which cites, for example, Miguel Queiróswho presided over the National Jurisdiction Council and has now resigned, it reads that “PAN stopped being who it was — the only platform where causes and committed activism have ever converged into a politically organized representative structure.”
“Remember that Inês Sousa Real was elected in 2023with around 73% of congress votes, on a list that has since lost the dropper several elements that repeatedly highlighted a lack of internal democracy”, reads the statement.
“Additionally, according to the party’s current statutes, the elective congress should have already been held in May 2025, which has not yet happened, and has not even been announced to take place in 2025, maintaining the PAN in its illegalitydespite the insistence of members and the opinion of the National Jurisdiction Council”, adds the text sent to Lusa.
This announcement was made symbolically this SaturdayWorld Vegan Day, which, the signatories add, is a “collective disaffiliation with a symbolic and ethical character as a call for the reconstruction of political spaces truly horizontal, empathetic and democratic, for which this group of more than thirty people will do their part”.
Also in a statement, and in a text in which it begins by saying that “there has been a constant and consistent increase in the number of new memberships”, the PAN management states that “the disaffiliations of militants who were away of the active life of the party for several months and years, ends up being a process of formalization of personal dismissals that occurs naturally.”
“But also that some of these people, despite still being formally affiliated with the PAN, included lists of competing candidates to that of the PANin other cases publicly expressing support for other parties in the last local elections, violating the statutes and disrespecting the work of other activists”, adds the party’s note.
“The exit decision now formalized translates only the natural closure of a personal and political cycle that was already exhausted”, concludes the note.
