Former PSD councilor in the Paredes Chamber Ricardo Sousa, 52 years old, announced this Friday, November 7th, his candidacy for the Presidency of the Republic as a “warning cry” for regionalization and to solve the structural problems that affect the “most fragile”.
“This is a cry of warning, essentially that, we are aware of the humility of our candidacy, but there are structural problems in the country and especially in the most fragile areas that we want to alert and be a voice of warning for the most fragile, those who are most in deficit”said the candidate, who enters the race for Belém just over a month before the deadline to present the necessary 7,500 signatures.
Housing, health, education, regulated immigration and regionalization as the main lines of his program were highlighted as the main lines of Ricardo Sousa’s candidacy for the electoral act scheduled for January 18th of next year.
Quoted by Lusa, the candidate says that regionalization would be “important to leverage the regions in several sectors that currently do not have tools”, pointing out as “good examples” what is happening in the archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores, where the “health and education sectors are highly leveraged by proximity solutions”.
With regard to housing, he mentioned the latest censuses to state “that there are almost 800 thousand vacant houses that can be restored”, noting that “the 2.5 billion euros requested from the European Investment Bank by the Government” would be enough to “build 200 thousand houses”, thus reaching the “extraordinary number of one million houses in the country which would probably solve the housing problem, regulating a market that is very inflated in terms of rental and acquisition”.
Asked about his party’s position in supporting Luís Marques Mendes in the race for Belém, Ricardo Sousa kicked it into the corner, presenting himself as a “social democrat” and “humanist, reformist, interclassist and Catholic”.
The former councilor of the Chamber of Paredes criticizes the political agenda of recent times, considering that the country “has more important problems than immigration”, even though he defends its regulation. “It is important to take care of those who come here to work, because if we are a country of emigrants and we have many of our fellow citizens working abroad and we want them to be well treated and well received, naturally, we should also want this for those who come and respect the ways of living in Portugal”he stated, coming out in defense of working Portuguese mothers: “If they are not protected, if they choose to have fewer children, there will be no Portuguese people to defend the country.”