“There is no problem with Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa but I am a socialist”, he replied after long minutes saying that “I would never” vote “for a candidate from the right”. Pedro Nuno Santos argues that the Socialist Party must go to play in next year’s presidential elections, but that if not, it will vote “for a BE or PCP candidate”, he said in an interview with RTP3.
The minister’s position departs from other socialists – such as the prime minister himself, who launched, even if indirectly, the re-election of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa – or Ferro Rodrigues, who already said that he would vote for the current President if he goes to game. Pedro Nuno Santos says that they are “in their right” to support the current President but that, in his opinion, what is at stake is a “vision of society” and then everything moves him away from Marcelo.
“I have a lot of respect for the President of the Republic. He managed to build a close relationship. I acknowledge him because it is fair”, but it is not only that that counts in his arguments to be his President, but a different “vision of society. “. “I can’t be in a campaign with a candidate or a right-wing party.” “I didn’t become a right wing and he didn’t become a left wing,” he said.
For Pedro Nuno Santos, the PS “should go to play” in the presidential elections: “As a rule, I think there should always be a candidate in the PS area”. Recalling that despite being a single-person election, it is normal for people to look at party support, left the question: “Does anyone believe that [a candidatura de Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa] Aren’t you partisan when you were president of a party? “
Representative of a wing to the left of the PS, who has been silent on the topic, when asked whether he would support an eventual candidacy by Ana Gomes, Pedro Nuno did not want to give explicit support to the former MEP but it was clear that if Ana Gomes moves forward , will vote for the socialist, not least because he replied that “if there is a candidate from the PS area, vote for that candidate”. If “there is not”, he will vote “for a leftist candidate”, coming out of the BE or the PCP, closer to his view of society, which defend the “community” against a more “individualist” view that characterizes the right-wing parties, he argued.
Socialists have not yet decided what they are going to do, despite António Costa’s implicit and undeclared support for Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. The party will decide the issue in a national commission, but it does not appear to be in a hurry to do so.
However, as far as Government solutions are concerned, Pedro Nuno Santos again reaffirmed that he defends the solution on the left, despite the PCP’s vote against the Supplementary Budget, not least because the PS should not seek support just to approve budgets but should want to govern “to transform Portugal”. The two parties on the left, he said, “have been working for Portugal, I know it is possible to work with them”.
Despite the crisis, he has no doubts: “The solution to the crisis can only be on the left” because it is the left that guarantees a solution that serves “everyone”.
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