Defeated in one of the strongholds of the Social Democrats, the PSD leader considers that the parties in the democratic center were unable to understand the desires of a million Portuguese people.
Chega won the elections in Faro, precisely the district where the social democratic leader Miguel Pinto Luz was head of the AD list. Contested by several party members – who were not comfortable with the choice imposed by Luís Montenegro – Pinto Luz was unable to maintain the party as leader in the region.
In his view, and in an interview with the newspaper “Público”, the former candidate for the leadership of the Social Democrats states that “the explanation for the result in Faro and at national level, for 1.1 million Portuguese people to vote for Chega, is the same: the total absence of policies that solve the problems of our fellow citizens”. In this context, Pinto Luz considers that there is a challenge that moderates must know how to respond to: “This is a huge challenge for the so-called moderate parties, from the center, such as the PSD and the PS, which have not been capable in recent decades – and, therefore, the mea culpa has to be done – to find solutions for these people”.
“It’s dramatic, I must say,” he confessed – remembering that Pinto Luz was one of the social democrats who considered the convergence between the PSD and Chega de André Ventura a possibility not to be ignored. In an interview with the newspaper “Expresso” four years ago, Pinto Luz stated that he was not interested in “politically correct” answers and expressed openness to this convergence.
Using arguments that were profusely publicized at that time, Miguel Pinto Luz stated that, if the then Prime Minister António Costa allowed himself to converge with the radical left – with the PCP and the Bloco de Esquerda apparently being in this group – then it made no sense that the right set herself ‘red lines’ that she could not cross.
At the time, several commentators stated that Pinto Luz was following the same path that was followed by the Popular Party in Spain: remaining the main voice of the right in the neighboring country, he had not been able to resist the growth of Vox extremists. Throughout the legislatures of socialist Pedro Sánchez, the two parties converged in several regions – such as in the capital, Madrid – having ‘destroyed’ the ‘sanitary fence’ that surrounded Santiago Abascal’s party. The evidence that the right-wing conservatives and the Spanish extreme right were on a convergence route ended up, for now, never becoming effective, since Vox was unable to maintain the size it reached – and in the last elections, in Last July, the sum of PP plus the extreme right was no longer enough to form a government.
