Filipe Amorim / Lusa
Luísa Neto in 2024, with the then President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, at the opening session of the 13th National Congress of Public Administration
Jurist Luísa Neto, candidate nominated by the PS with the support of the PSD, failed in Parliament to be elected to the position of Ombudsman, obtaining 131 votes in favor, insufficient to reach the necessary two-thirds majority.
The current president of the Board of Directors of the National Institute of Administration (INA), Luisa Netogot 131 votes in favor58 blanks and 18 nulls. To be elected, the jurist needed to receive the votes of 2/3 of the deputies present at the session, as long as they were in a number greater than the absolute majority of deputies.
In this Friday’s vote, the jurist, who was proposed at the end of May by PS indicationwith the , thus needed 138 votes from the 207 members present in the assembly at the time of the vote.
The two parties together have 147 seats in Parliament.
Speaking to , an official PS source said that if Luísa Neto decides to re-apply will once again have the support of socialists. The PSD also maintains support for the jurist, the party’s parliamentary leader told Lusa, Hugo Soares.
“If the PS repeats the appointment of Luísa Neto as ombudsman, the PSD will place all your commitment to your election“, stated Hugo Soares, for whom the result of the vote “was due to the many absences” in the plenary.
This Friday’s vote was second attempt to elect a new incumbent for a position that has been unfilled since the beginning of the current legislature, when Maria Lucia Amaral She left that position to serve as Minister of Internal Affairs, a position from which she resigned at the beginning of this year.
On April 12, in a first failed election, the former Socialist Secretary of State Tiago Antunesproposed by the PS for Ombudsman, achieved a result of less than two thirds, with just 104 votes in favor from a total of 230 deputies.
The new candidate for ombudsman, Luísa Neto, was appointed president of the INA in 2021 by the then minister of State Modernization and Public Administration, Alexandra Leitãoduring the second of three socialist executives led by Antonio Costa.
She graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon and has a PhD from the University of Porto and stood out in the Portuguese Victim Support Association, where she worked from 2007 to 2013.
Luísa Neto was advisor to José Pedro Aguiar-Branco when the current president of the Assembly of the Republic exercised the functions of minister of justice in the Government led by Pedro Santana Lopes.
