PS Congress: what was most “impressive” were the empty chairs (and the printer case)

100 people watching important interventions in Viseu. Application rejected for an unusual reason.

The PS left Viseu with the door open to dialogue with the Government, albeit with more demands, and without internal opposition to its re-elected general secretary, José Luís Carneiro.

A threat of rupture with the Governmentthrough news from following the possible exclusion of socialists from the negotiation of the list of three judges of the Constitutional Court to be elected by parliament, ended up not come true at the 25th National Congress in Viseu.

Right at the opening, on Friday, José Luís Carneiro promised “a resounding no” to the Government, if it turns to the extreme right in negotiation processes such as the election of judges to the Constitutional Court.

“There are lines that cannot be negotiated. The Constitution is not relativized. Democracy is not instrumentalized. If they try to disfigure the balances of our democratic system, starting by trying to unbalance the Constitutional Court, they will hear a resounding no from us”, he warned, demanding clarification from Luís Montenegro regarding the executive’s preferred partner.

Charles Caesarhaving just been re-elected president of the party with almost 90% of the votes, put some water on the boil on Saturday, I argue that the PS must “want to be part of the solutions”, despite the Government’s “deafness and democratic deficit”.

José Luís himself Ram took some pressure off of the political moment, by stating that the PS continues to dialogue with the PSD on the issue of bodies external to parliament, especially the Constitutional Court, and asked for reservation on this matter.

Ana Sá Lopes sums it up in: “The PS seemed to have entered the congress willing to cut ties with the PSD, whatever that may be, and left Viseu wanting “agreements and commitments” with Luís Montenegro. The general message couldn’t be more confusing.”

“The PS’s ‘grab me or I’ll kill’ lasted 48 hours. The party that was going to ‘cut with the Government’ on Saturday because of the Constitutional Court became ‘constructive opposition’”, continues the political expert.

However, Ana Sá Lopes was particularly impressed by another issue related to the congress in Viseu: the number of people present.

The room was prepared for 2,000 people – but didn’t reach 1,000 filled chairs. In fact, in the interventions by Francisco Assis, Augusto Santos Silva or Alexandra Leitão, there were 100 people listeningnot maximum.

“A The thing that impressed me most at the PS congress were the empty seats. (…) The room was empty in José Luís Carneiro’s initial intervention and the scene was repeated in other interventions by prominent activists”, who warns that it is a sign of loneliness in the party – and in a PS that is supposedly a central party of the political system in Portugal (although the congress itself had parallel meetings, which removed people from the main stage).

Only moment of opposition

A absence of a internal opposition assumed was evident in the result for the party bodies, with Carneiro’s single list for the National Commission, led by the president of the Chamber of Almada, Inês de Medeiros, being elected with 88.9% of the votes.

The election to this body generated the only moment of clear opposition throughout the congress, when a list to the National Commission of the former deputy Ricardo Gonçalves turned out to be rejected by the table, first, and by the delegates, later, by only having seven names instead of the necessary ones 251which led to the announcement of the challenge of all electoral acts of the congress.

The rejected list claimed that the necessary sheets were left in the printer. But the argument did not catch on and the list was rejected.