Rangel says criticism of Rui Moreira’s mayors ‘doesn’t matter’

PSD Vice-President Paulo Rangel said this Monday that criticism from activists and mayors of Porto regarding the alleged choice of Rui Moreira to head the list in the European elections of the Democratic Alliance (AD) “does not matter at all”.

“For those involved in local politics, we allow them to engage in local politics. Those who are involved in national and European politics and bear this responsibility are obviously not at all concerned about these political issues, although I, as Porto, am very interested.” […] but I honestly tell you that it doesn’t matter at all,” said the first vice-president of the SDP National Political Commission.

“This is local politics, now all that remains is to condition the European list on local or municipal politics,” the head of Portuguese diplomacy also added, making statements to the Portuguese press during his debut at the meetings of EU foreign ministers. in Luxembourg.

Assuring that he is not aware of the lists that will be made public this evening, after withdrawing from the process due to the fact that he previously headed the PSD list three times at European level, Paulo Rangel stressed: “We cannot confuse local politics, which In fact, I know this well, because in this case he is from Porto – with national politics and even more so with European politics.”

“I had my own position regarding the process of creating this list […] not to interfere in this process precisely because I topped the list three times, so I thought that I should, since I am not a candidate now, not participate in this process, but honestly […] I have great confidence in the bodies of the SDP and the SDS and am confident that we will have a really good list capable of winning the elections,” the vice-president of the party emphasized.

“This is my absolute confidence and I will fully support the decisions that the PSD and CDS authorities will take today, although in fact I honestly know absolutely nothing,” said Paulo Rangel.

The SDS and SDS-PP will hold a meeting of the two parties’ National Councils this Monday to vote on candidates for the European elections and approve a change in the name of the AD electoral coalition with which they will stand in the elections. .

The head of the AD list is not yet officially known – the name of the current mayor of Porto, Rui Moreira, is named by some media as the most likely – but it is already known that only one of the PSD elected in 2019 can repeat as a candidate for the European Parliament: Lidia Pereira, recently elected vice-president European People’s Party and which four years ago was “number two”, according to a bet by then PSD President Rui Rio.

This Monday, activists and mayors of Porto PSD, including Vladimiro Feliz, who was the candidate of the Social Democrats for the Chamber of Porto, demonstrated today against the intention of the national leadership to nominate Rui Moreira as the head of the list in the European elections.

Subscribers consider this “a betrayal of the people of Porto, the activists, supporters and mayors elected by the PSD,” saying they have no doubt that “this will leave a deep mark on the trust that the people of Porto have in the PSD.”