The community in France is “alien” from the elections to the Council of Portuguese Communities

Candidates for the Council of Portuguese Communities of France, although they have been waiting for elections for four years, claim that the process was “done on its knees” and that the community in France, one of the largest in the world, was unaware of the scrutiny.

“On the one hand, we are glad that the election date has finally been set, but people are not going to participate because there is no communication. It seems like everything is planned on your knees. I even sent an email to the CNE asking for documents to be sent to the associations so we could pass something on, but this was denied. There is only digital information that has no meaning,” said Rui Barata, the current councilor and the only candidate for the Strasbourg consular district, according to a statement from the Lusa agency.

France is the second country in the world to elect the largest number of councilors from Portuguese communities after Brazil, but the lack of information on the estimated 400,000 Portuguese registered in the country is one of the candidates’ biggest complaints. Consultants are distributed across four consular districts, but complaints about a lack of information are common across all.

“If people don’t even know if they are registered on the list, how will they know about the elections? Another election in which there are only three polling stations in the Paris consular region and, since there is no postal voting, even less is known. We needed to use the connection of the state, sending letters to everyone, using the social connection of the communities that even do this work, and the media itself in Portugal,” said João Martins Pereira, the first candidate for the post of councilor in Paris for the “For the Protection” list rights of Portuguese people abroad.”

The possibility of installing voting tables in associations or other accredited locations was considered, but Portuguese authorities ultimately rejected this possibility, limiting voting to consulates and some honorary consulates. This means that many Portuguese are forced to travel hundreds of kilometers, as in the case of Lille or Nantes, who have to come to Paris if they want to vote for councilors, since there has been no dematerialization of the electoral rolls.

“We’ve gone back to the 40s with paper. At a crucial moment when the web summit had just taken place in Lisbon. It would be funny if it weren’t tragic. There are about 400 thousand voters in France, about 220 thousand in Paris alone, let’s imagine notebooks. It’s even an environmental issue,” said Paulo Marques, a council member and candidate for the “Paulo Marques: Civil Rights for Immigrants” list.

Paulo Márquez was still president of the council in France and believes that in recent years empty promises were made to the Portuguese abroad as a test for electronic voting in these elections, leaving the community unaware of this vote.

“We do not have time to engage in teaching activities in the Portuguese Communities Council. There have been no elections for eight years, so the community is alienated from this body because it has been difficult in recent years. We feel cheated because there should have been an electronic test, but there wasn’t, then there couldn’t be elections because of Covid-19, and communities always come last,” he said.

Paris has two lists of candidates, as do Bordeaux-Toulouse and Lyon-Marseille. Paulo Marquez prefers not to talk about rivalry because, since the distribution is done according to the Hondt method, everyone will probably work together.

Regarding the interest in the first participation in the elections, João Martins Pereira considers it important to intensify the discussions in this body.

“I have been interested in this institution for many years because it is very specific to the community in that it represents us and is the only government advisory institution directly elected by the citizens. the most complete and that it is even difficult to find information about the PDA. I want to get the most out of it, and it’s interesting to use this election to update the advisers’ profiles,” he said.

To run again, Rui Barata spoke of the importance of not quitting halfway, the main goal of which is to introduce electronic voting for Portuguese living abroad in all ballots in Portugal.

“I didn’t want to quit halfway through, and that was the main reason, and the second was the realization that without our list there would be no representation. Our main goal will always be to make it easier for Portuguese people outside Portugal to vote for the Internet. This is our goal,” he concluded.