Rosário Farmhouse, outgoing president of the Lisbon Municipal Assembly, warned that whoever would succeed him would have a “demanding mandate” and appears to have anticipated what could well be a surprise in the organization of the Chamber.
The first meeting of the Assembly takes place tonight, with a view to the composition of the Board. The PSD-CDS-IL coalition had the most votes for the Municipal Assembly on October 12th. Together, there were 21 deputies, adding to these 11 elected in the City Council, not all of them from the PSD. It is in this chapter that the hope of the PS and the coalition of Bloco, PAN and Livre may lie. These four parties had 12 presidents and 18 mandates. But there is one piece in the chess: the CDU, which has one parish and six municipal mandates.
As such, DN knows that CDU and PS actively negotiated last week for a rebalance of forces in Lisbon, with the prospect of composing a list with more votes. Including the CDU, this list would have 37 municipal deputies, which is not a clear figure, as the main party leaders were also included in the discussion. If Chega voted in favor of the left, it could immediately lead to André Moz Caldas taking the leadership of the Assembly, but the perspective, as far as DN knows, is that André Ventura’s party could ally with the PSD in the event that the CDU is with the PS.
Thus, it will depend closely on captivating centrists or liberals so that there is an imbalance in favor of the socialists, which would be a huge blow to Moedas’ aspirations. At issue are the negotiations with some elements of the CDS-PP for positions in the Executive, such as in the allocation on the council lists, but also some oppositions between the centrists and the IL in the coalition agreement.
The decision had not been made at the start of today’s meeting of municipal deputies, and the outcome was therefore unpredictable.
“The PCP has always defended a solution in which the table presents the body’s plural commitment taking into account the electoral results. We saw in the solution found in the last mandate a consensus solution, in the single consensus list, ensuring this plural representation at the table. This is what we tried to do this year too. This, unfortunately, was made unavailable, at least until now, by the PS and PSD. Let’s make a contribution again so that a possibility is found to ensure a plural composition at the Assembly Table that takes the results into account electoral elections”, João Ferreira told the Press, looking ahead to the negotiation, inducing that there were conversations in this context.
But he declared demands by saying that the PCP “will not be available to support one or another of the candidates”, understanding that “this would not ensure beneficial plural representation.”