Mariana Mortagua states that the Azores are an example of how upvoting doesn’t work on PS

The BE coordinator said this Sunday that the Azores is “an example of the problems” arising from the vote on the right to respond to the PS and regretted that the archipelago “learned very quickly from the example of the right in Madeira”.

A week before the legislative elections of the Azores on February 4 and almost a month before the national elections, as she remembered, Mariana Mortagua joined the regional coordinator, candidate António Lima, at a lunch with activists in Ponta Delgada, where she asked that the whole country saw what happened on the nine islands.

In 2020, he said, “many people believed that the only way to end the cycle of the socialist majority” was to vote for the right-wing opposition, which eventually led to a coalition between the PSD, CDS-PP and PPM, which united, ” to satisfy his old clientele” at the cost of “attacking the most vulnerable.”

“The Azores is an example of the problems that arise when voting to respond to the Socialist Party. If the country did not like two years of an absolute majority of the PS, then the Azores were ruled for two decades by an absolute majority. The Socialist Party, with all the vices, with the same arrogance and the same debauchery that the Republic has witnessed for the last two years,” he said.

Recalling that the risk of poverty increased from 22% in 2020 to 26% and support in this area fell by 40%, Mariana Mortagua emphasized that this right fulfills a goal “intended and explicitly agreed upon” in the Azores, and today more wealth, but less distribution in the region.

“The right may not be capable of much else, but it knows how to masterfully and easily create poverty,” he added.

The leader said BE would “establish rights” in both the Azores and Madeira, where “everything indicates there will be elections,” following the departure of regional government president Miguel Albuquerque, accused of corruption, in a lawsuit.

“Rights must be taken away from the government, whether in the Azores, Madeira or nationally, and we will do that in all these elections,” he said.

Among the problems noted in the leadership of the coalition led by Social Democrat José Manuel Bolheiro, the coordinator named direct adjustments, “a number of political appointments far exceeding what the PS managed to do” and the creation of “more luxurious subsidized people”, noting that the Bensaúde group continues receive “an income of 22 million euros that PS guaranteed and that the right paid for the exclusive purchase of fuel oil, which significantly exceeds market requirements.”

Now, according to the blocker, the parties are “engaged in a fight for votes and for who will command more in the future,” and criticism extends to other political forces.

“The Liberal Initiative never enters into coalitions with the far right, except in cases where the PSD forces the Liberal Initiative to enter into coalitions with the far right. PAN makes agreements with anyone, be it next to Chega with Boleiro’s PSD, be it with Madeira is right, and even tried to avoid the May elections and save the coalition in Madeira by removing Albuquerque from the presidency of the regional government,” he said.

Following the 2023 Madeira elections, Miguel Albuquerque signed an agreement with the only deputy elected by the PAN to make governance viable.

This week the Social Democrat was named as a defendant in a case in which he is suspected of, among other things, corruption, malfeasance, abuse of power and attacks on the rule of law, and the PAN demanded his resignation, which has since been announced.

The President of the Republic then announced that he would not take a position on Madeira’s political future in order to give the regional parliament the opportunity to approve the region’s budget in February.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said his powers to dissolve the regional assembly could only be exercised within two months, as the six-month period after the last elections was still running out.