With four former governors on the list, Alexandra Leitan heads the PS bench

The only candidate for the presidency of the parliamentary party, Alexandra Leitan, presents this Wednesday to the leadership of the parliamentary group a list of 12 vice-presidents, including former governors Mariana Vieira da Silva, António Mendonça Mendes and Marina Gonçalves.

From 18:30 to 20:30, this list, to which the Lusa agency had access, will be voted on by 78 PS deputies.

Of the 12 vice-presidents proposed by Alexandra Leitan, four names stand out who were in the last government of António Costa and who took over as PS deputies after the new chief executive took office.

They include former Presidential Minister Mariana Vieira da Silva, former Deputy Secretary of State to Prime Minister António Mendonça Mendes, former Housing Minister Marina Gonçalves and former Secretary of State for Regional Development Isabel Ferreira.

This list of vice-presidents, compiled by Alexandra Leitan, represents an update of the leadership of Eurico Brilhante Dias, leaving only Francisco Cesar, João Torres and Pedro Delgado Alves.

Ana Paula Bernardo, João Paulo Rebelo, Luis Graça, Maria Begoña and Thiago Barbosa Ribeiro are new additions to this list that will be voted on this Wednesday, to which the roles and names of the Board of Directors and the Finance Council will then be added. .

Among the three elected are Elsa Pais, President of Socialist Women, Miguel Costa Matos, Secretary General of the PS, and Paulo Cafofo (President of PS-Madeira).

Hugo Costa (President) and Andre Rijo and Clarissa Campos (Members) are proposed for the Board of Directors, while Patricia Faro (President) and Luis Diaz and Maria Lagriminha Coelho (Members) are proposed for the Supervisory Board.

The elections will take place using a ballot box that will be available in the Sala Tagus, in the new parliament building, immediately after the meeting of the PS parliamentary group, scheduled for 18:00.

Last week, a Socialist source told Lusa that Social Democratic Party Secretary General Pedro Nuno Santos would propose Alexandra Leitan as president of the party’s parliamentary group.

Alexandra Leitão will succeed Eurico Brillante Dias, who has been the parliamentary leader of the Socialist Party since 2022, and will also become the second woman to head the Socialist bench after Ana Catarina Mendes (2019-2022).

She is currently a member of the PS National Secretariat and was the party’s campaign program coordinator for the last legislative elections.

She was Minister of State Modernization and Public Administration from 2019 to 2022, and Deputy Secretary of State and Education from 2015 to 2019. In the last legislature, as an MP, she was the President of the Parliamentary Committee on Transparency and the Statute of MPs.

In 2022, the then leader of the Socialist Party and Prime Minister António Costa already offered the position of leader of parliament to Alexandra Leitan, but she ultimately refused.

In a conversation with the newspaper Público, the MP expressed herself as “flattered by the invitation”, but said that she decided to refuse because she believes that she “has a more executive profile” and has “never been a deputy.”