There was no date for the early elections, not even a decision to hold them, and the parties were already defining strategies and leadership while the president of Portugal, Rebelo de Sousa, met for four hours with the Council of State and its 17 members. The socialists were, yesterday, the only ones who did not want to go to elections, but from within the party they were preparing for it. Finally, at 9:00 p.m., the president dissolved the Assembly and called the polls. The elections will be on March 10.
Costa tried to avoid elections and even proposed some names to replace him. “I opt for the dissolution of the Assembly of the Republic and the calling of elections on March 10, 2024,” Rebelo de Sousa concluded.
In the Socialist Party of Portugal, in power since 2015, the best positioned candidate is the current Minister of Infrastructure, Pedro Nuno Santos, although there has also been speculation about José Luis Carneiro, Minister of the Interior. Ana Catarina Mendes, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, has also been sounding out her group, but it seems that she will not continue with the idea due to the strength of Nuno Santos.
Another of the parties, the so-called PAN (People, Animals, Nature) opts to organize primaries before presenting a candidate by hand. Luis Montenegro, the leader of the opposition for the Social Democratic Party (PSD), was also betting on the elections “to be able to overcome everything that happened.” The coordinator of the National Strategic Council of the PSD, Pedro Duarte, assured yesterday that the party is already “very advanced” in the electoral program and that it is now necessary to “reschedule the calendar” for March 10.
Almost 70% of Portuguese voters want early elections after the abrupt resignation of the socialist prime minister, a poll published yesterday showed, while Portuguese media reported that resigned prime minister António Costa himself was also the subject of an investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office and not just his close circle. Costa has denied having “acted wrongly.”
António Costa’s chief of staff, Vítor Escária, one of the five arrested in the case that caused the fall of the prime minister, kept 75,800 euros in his office distributed among boxes of wine and a shelf, which have been seized, reported yesterday local media.
The Portuguese channel Sic Notícias stated that the Police found the money during the searches carried out on Tuesday in Escária’s office in the São Bento palace, the official residence of the resigned prime minister, who resigned after learning that he was being investigated in a case of possible corruption of the Government in lithium and hydrogen businesses.
The newspapers Público and Expresso added that the money was found hidden in several envelopes hidden in boxes of wine and in books on a shelf in his office. Vítor Escária’s lawyer, Tiago Rodrigues Bastos, assured yesterday that this seized amount “has strictly nothing to do with the thesis of the Prosecutor’s Office” and “is related to his professional activity prior to the functions he performed” as chief of staff of Coast.
The Portuguese newspaper Expresso also publishes that the Prosecutor’s Office recorded at least 12 telephone conversations that could incriminate him in the favorable treatment of the company Start Campus, one of the movements that are being investigated within what is already known as “Operation Influencer.”