Environmental concerns and a desire to help the community or develop the region in which they live have prompted several Portuguese to stand as candidates in this Thursday’s local elections in England.
Candidate from the local party “Community to the Parish”. [ward] Luis Miguel Lancos, from Blenheim Park in Southend-on-Sea in the south of England, begins by telling Lusa that he has no political ambitions.
“I’m not a politician, I don’t even want to be elected, I’m not conducting any election campaign. I want to help develop the region in which I live,” he emphasized.
He explained that this candidacy was a way he found to try to influence local decision makers to support the project of creating a technology center in the city.
The idea came about after he left London, where he had lived since 2007, for Southend during the Covid-19 pandemic to be closer to the sea but with easy access to the British capital.
In 2023, he left his job at a North American bank to launch an artificial intelligence startup.
In the new city, he said he found a “defeatist discourse” and an underutilized airport, despite the “potential for entrepreneurship and innovation” in sectors such as green aviation and space technology.
“Landlords treat immigrants poorly”
In Bristol, southwest England, Moises Santo is the Green Party candidate for the ward of Avonmouth and Lawrence Weston.
He was born in Timor-Leste to a Portuguese mother and a Timorese father. He has lived in the United Kingdom since 2006 and has been interested from the outset in contributing to the community, which now numbers around two thousand people.
He founded a Timorese association and a football team, promoted English language courses and helped Timorese obtain driver’s licenses and improve their professional prospects.
It was Moises Santo who approached the British party with an interest in getting involved in local activities because he was concerned about the environment and also because he aligned himself with a left-wing ideology “that helps people”.
“Landlords treat immigrants poorly, they don’t seem to have any rights,” he complained, noting that he wants to improve living conditions and increase the frequency of buses.
“Queen of Recycling” from Porto
Deolinda Maria Eltringham is also the Environment Party candidate, but for the ward of Hitchin Bearton, in North Hertfordshire, about 60 kilometers north of London.
The Portuguese was born in Porto in 1959 and grew up in Mozambique before moving with her family to South Africa in 1975 after decolonization.
After marrying a British man, she moved to Hitchin in the United Kingdom in 1986, where her scientific training and concerns about climate change led her to develop several initiatives related to recycling and energy conservation.
Last year, Hertfordshire Life magazine crowned her the “Queen of Recycling” for preventing 22 tonnes of items, from pens to toothbrushes and assorted food packaging, from ending up in the bin.
Deolinda Eltringham is also an activist with the Make Voices Matter movement, which advocates replacing the majority system with proportional representation in the United Kingdom.
“This is the biggest obstacle to true democratic representation in much of English politics,” he said.
“I am for Europe”
In north-east London, Valdomiro Lourenço is the Liberal Democrat candidate for the Hatton South constituency of Brentwood.
Arriving in the UK in 2015, the 54-year-old from Coimbra said he witnessed the effects of Brexit in terms of xenophobia and unemployment in the automotive sector where he worked.
“I have since joined the Liberal Democrats because I am pro-European and they are the only party that has a clearer position on this,” he explained.
Despite having a Liberal Democrat majority in Brentwood, Lourenço has little hope of defeating the current Conservative mayors and has done little campaigning.
Security, construction of sports fields for youth and management of public accounts were some of the issues raised.
Elections will be held this Thursday
In this Thursday’s municipal elections, about 2,600 seats in 107 municipalities will be voted on.
Mayors will be elected in counties, metropolitan areas and unitary authorities, local authorities of varying sizes and responsible for services such as waste collection, green space, urbanisation, road maintenance and schools.
England, the most populous region of the United Kingdom, has 317 local authorities, whose political representatives are elected on a rotating basis for four-year terms.
Polling stations will be open from 7am to 10pm, with some results due early in the morning, but vote counting could continue throughout Friday and Saturday.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
I am Michael Melvin, an experienced news writer with a passion for uncovering stories and bringing them to the public. I have been working in the news industry for over five years now, and my work has been published on multiple websites. As an author at 24 News Reporters, I cover world section of current events stories that are both informative and captivating to read.