Andre Ventura says Chega Azores is available for government agreement with PSD

Chega President André Ventura said this Friday that Chega Azores is ready to conclude a government agreement with the PSD in the archipelago and could thus give an opportunity to a right-wing leader in the autonomous region.

Andre Ventura said the information he had received from Chegi’s Azores president, José Pacheco, was that there were “informal conversations” about bringing the two parties – Chegi and the Social Democratic Party (PSD) – closer together, but he stressed that that there should be “an agreement, a kind of joint government document, which will determine the main directions of intervention by the executive branch.”

Chegi’s leader said he was not surprised that the Socialist Party (PS) in the Azores had not made the government viable and accused it of being “selfish”, saying it had limited itself to thinking “about its election result”. “.

Andre Ventura considered this a defeat for the PSI and the PSD, since on election night “José Manuel Bolheiro had two hypotheses: a convergence to the right, which would allow for an absolute majority, or a convergence with the PSI, which would also allow for an absolute majority.” majority “.

“He winked at the PS and the answer was given today: the PS will not make the government of the Azores viable,” he said.

“As far as I understand, there should be no agreement on parliamentary influence, but only a government agreement” and “as the president of Chega dos Açores said today, there are conditions for this, there are conditions for a stable government.” , he said.

Andre Ventura said he appealed to “universal common sense” and “universal responsibility” to prevent “another situation of instability in the autonomous region.”

“Right now we have the PS saying that this will not be part of this solution and the PSD needs to learn a lesson from this because what happened in the Azores can probably happen at the national level,” he said.

He left the SDP with a warning, asking whether it wants convergence and stability or “prefers to risk instability.”

“If there is no rapprochement, you will always have to analyze the program of the regional government and see what kind of government program it is. I am not in the Azores, I am not the president of Chega dos Açores, I cannot expect such an answer. The only scenario I see. How reasonable is it to reach mutual understanding at this point,” he said.

With this understanding, Ventura ensured that the expected agreement would come from the government and not from parliament.

In Sunday’s regional elections, the SDP/CDS-PP/PPM elected 26 deputies, three short of an absolute majority. Jose Manuel Boleiro, leader of the right-wing coalition that has held power in the archipelago since 2020, said he would rule the country with a relative majority for the next four years.

The PS is the second power in the archipelago with 23 mandates, followed by Chega with five mandates. BE, IL and PAN each elected one regional MP, adding to the 57 elected.

Chega, which in 2020 was one of the parties (besides IL) to sign the parliamentary agreement to make coalition governance viable and in 2023 abstained from voting on the budget, said after the campaign that its goal was to integrate the executive, but without availability of CDS and PPM.