Castro Marim Mayor Francisco Amaral told Lusa on Tuesday that he intends to retire from politics at the end of his term in 2025, when he turns 32 as mayor.
Francisco Amaral (PSD) recalled that after 20 years at the head of the Chamber of Alcoatim and taking office in 2013 as president of the neighboring municipality of Castro Marim, he is currently the “oldest mayor” of the municipality in Portugal. , with three decades of consistent performance and “victories in every contested electoral act”.
A law limiting the term of office of mayors was passed in 2005 but was not retroactive, allowing the mayor, a physician by profession, to remain in office in Alcutim from 1993 until 2013, when he successfully ran for President of the House with then Castro Marim in the Faro region.
“I will rely on the “boxes”, that is, politically, I will rely on the “boxes”, although they sting me there in order to [voltar a concorrer a] alkutim and for [ser candidato em] real village [de Santo António]. But now I think about grandchildren, I already have an 18-year-old grandson who passed me by, and now I have a five-year-old who I don’t want to pass by,” he replied when asked if he equated the reform with the end of the third and the last mandate in Castro Marim.
Although he has retired from politics and wants to enjoy his family more, 67-year-old Francisco Amaral also wants to continue devoting himself to medicine, his training area and leisure activities, fishing and gardening.
“But there is one thing that I don’t want to part with, which is medicine, I want to keep going to the Faro hospital on Thursdays, I want to go to the mobile medical station through the mountains, be it the Serra de Castro Marim, be it the Serra de Alkutim – two days a week,” he stressed.
Since 1999, the Mayor has been a volunteer doctor in general and family medicine at the Centro Hospitalar do Algarve, currently also providing home care in Alcutima and Castro Marima, located in the extreme east of the Algarve, on the border with southern Spain.
Francisco Amaral took the opportunity to reminisce about his trip to the municipality of Castro Marim, given that “it was not easy” in the beginning due to financial constraints and majority opposition that prevented the executive from taking action.
The mayor stressed that it was then possible to “reverse the situation” when he demanded his resignation in order to force a midterm election that returned the SDP to the absolute majority it lost in 2013.
Now, despite being asked to run for other municipalities, the Dean of Portuguese Mayors reveals his intention to retire from politics at the end of his term, in 2025, when his third and final four-year term ends in Castro Marim, one of the 16 municipalities in the county. Faro.
Prior to his election as mayor, from 1982 to 1993 he worked as a family doctor at the Alcoteam Health Center, and was also a member of the Assembly of the Republic and a member of the Committee of the European Regions.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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