The PSD will make “corrections” to the statutes rejected by the Constitutional Court (CC) at the Congress on September 21 and 22, and says it has already provided for this possibility in the Regulation approved by the National Council at the beginning of July.
In a ruling dated August 8 and published on the TC website, the judges said they had decided to “deny the request to amend the Social Democratic Party’s Statutes approved at the 41st National Congress held on November 25, 2023, and ask the party to ‘correct four violations.’”
In an official position sent to the SDP today, the party said that the proposal to amend the legislation sent to the Court “was returned with minor annotations requiring correction, namely with issues that the TC considers legislative, and that the proposal related to the rules.”
“Since this is a normal practice of interaction between the Labor Committee and the editors of party charters, the SDP already took into account the need to make these corrections when it approved the regulations for the next national congress in early July, providing for these corrections,” the party says.
The regulations published on the PSD website expect the first item on the agenda of the main assembly, which will take place in Braga, to be the “approval of the amendments to the statutes,” with the vote and announcement of the results scheduled for 10:40 (expected to end at 11:00), shortly after the opening of Congress and the speech of the PSD president.
The NC asks the SDP to correct four violations, two of which involve the application of internal sanctions, namely because the statute relegates the classification of some violations to a later resolution.
“The applicant must eliminate the four currently proven illegal acts, which is a prerequisite for the registration of the new version of the Statute in the existing register of the Constitutional Court,” the Court states.
The TC does not point out any problems with the major changes made to the SDP statutes at the last congress, such as holding a National Congress if there is more than one candidate for the party presidency, ending the obligation to have either an updated quota for the ability to vote in direct elections or the introduction of electronic voting, nor the creation of the position of Equality Ombudsman, the introduction of gender quotas in internal elections or a management quota for the nomination of candidates for parliament.
“The identified legislative changes are aimed, in essence, at changing the internal structure of the party, without implying a violation of current constitutional and legal principles,” the resolution states.
However, in particular in the chapter on sanctions, the CU considers it necessary to “assess the norms of legislation that have not been amended,” stating that the set of laws submitted for annotation “contains norms that the Constitutional Court considered illegal, preventing its annotation in the requests of other political parties.”
In particular, in the case of the SDP statutes in force since 2012, the judges consider that, despite listing all the sanctions applicable to members who violate their obligations towards the party, they remain silent “in terms of declaring conduct that may constitute a breach of party discipline”, leading to “a violation of the principle of determinability of sanctions”.
“Thus, the party charter cannot completely omit the description of the classification (even in a minimal volume) of disciplinary offenses and the corresponding sanctions, especially in cases that may entail the application of punishment in the form of exclusion,” the resolution states, according to which it considers the definition of this classification in the Regulation on Military Discipline approved by the National Council unacceptable.
The TC also asks the SDP to amend another clause in its statutes concerning the National Jurisdiction Council, as it does not specify the “duty to notify the member of a decision to extend the decision-making period.”
The third violation pointed out by the TC – and which was already included in the statute before the amendments last November – is that, apart from Portuguese citizens, only “foreign citizens residing in the national territory who have been granted the right to vote are recognised by law”.
“It is important to remember that, according to the jurisprudence of this court, there is an exclusion of stateless citizens that is not constitutionally permissible,” the ruling said, proposing to supplement the article with this reference.
In the changes made to the PSD statute in November, TC challenged the transitional provision that stipulates that approved changes to the composition of the bodies “have an impact on their election”, given that all changes can only come into force after the appropriate annotation. The Constitutional Court said it had already used the same argument in relation to the Chega party.
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.