The PSD’s National Strategic Council (CEN) will hold a large meeting in Lisbon on Saturday with more than 400 registered participants before the body presents its proposals for the electoral program to the party’s leadership.
At the opening of the meeting, which will take place in the auditorium of the University of Nova de Lisboa, speeches are scheduled by the President of the PSD, Luis Montenegro, the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, and the President of the CEN. Pedro Duarte, followed by a discussion of the party’s contribution to the electoral program, in the second part closed to the media.
In a conversation with Lusa, Pedro Duarte explained that this meeting will be the “culmination” of CEN’s work to prepare the electoral program for the early legislative elections that will take place on March 10.
“After Saturday’s meeting, the coordinators will move on to the final draft of the CEN contribution. It is important to say that the person who will implement the program is the national leadership of the PSD, including its leader Luis Montenegro, as reported by CEN. There will be a supply – this is a working basis, a proposal, which the country’s leadership will then work on,” he emphasized.
The former MP admits that after Saturday’s meeting, from which he hopes there will be “new contributions”, it will be possible to hand over the CEN work base for the electoral program in December or early January to the national leadership.
According to Pedro Duarte, the CEN executive consists of 162 members, divided into 25 thematic sections (each with a coordinator, most of them independent and 13 of them women), and a further 988 registered members.
This will be the first in-person meeting with all those registered wishing to attend, as more than 40 meetings have already taken place online and more than 400 people have already confirmed their participation.
Saturday’s meeting also features a special guest, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, whose presence, according to the CEN leader, has two meanings.
On the one hand, “a reaffirmation of the SDP’s positioning as a Europeanist party” at a time when “the great ideological confrontation in Europe is between those who believe in liberal democracies, a moderate center capable of uniting societies, in contrast to more extremist views based on social divisions, and sometimes on incitement to hatred”
Pedro Duarte expects that in the next legislative elections in Portugal the choice will also be between “the moderate and responsible vision that the PSD wants to lead, and the more extreme views, whether from the right or the left.”
“The President of the European Parliament is a good supporter of this vision in which the PSD wants to unite, a person who promotes the unification of people and does not have divisive or antagonistic views,” he said.
On the other hand, Metsola “has been a very active fighter not only for human rights, but also for women’s rights in particular.”
“A 21st century society is not decent if it does not have absolute equality between men and women,” he said.
Following the acceleration of the calendars, CEN also launched a website to collect donations for the electoral program (https://www.psd.pt/pt/form/contributos-programa-eleitoral), which has already received more than 400 written contributions in ten days.
“The civic mobilization around the program was a pleasant surprise,” he said, given that last Saturday’s Congress also contributed to an increase in the number of people registered for Saturday’s meeting.
In January, at the first plenary meeting of the CEN during the mandate of Luis Montenegro, the PSD leader set the goal that before the end of his mandate, in the summer of 2024, the party would define the general directions of the electoral program in such a way that: in two years there will be “enough time to mature, clarify and spread it among people.”
However, the announcement of the Prime Minister’s resignation on November 7 accelerated the political calendar, and legislative elections scheduled for 2026 were postponed by the President of the Republic until March of the following year.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
I’m Sandra Hansen, a news website Author and Reporter for 24 News Reporters. I have over 7 years of experience in the journalism field, with an extensive background in politics and political science. My passion is to tell stories that are important to people around the globe and to engage readers with compelling content.