First meeting of the new parliament could take place on March 25th or 26th

Daily

According to a notice from the CNE, the assemblies to collect and count votes from residents abroad will meet on the 18th, 19th and 20th of March

Photographer: parliament.pt

The first plenary session of the Assembly of the Republic of the 16th legislature may take place on March 25th or 26th, if there are no complaints regarding the counting of votes abroad and if the CNE does not reach its deadlines. The topic was discussed at the leaders’ conference meeting, where the discussion of the distribution of seats in the future hemicycle also began, with the returned CDS-PP expected to sit between Chega and IL.

Parliamentary sources indicated that the date of March 25th was mentioned at the meeting as the first possible date for the first meeting of the Assembly of the Republic and March 26th as the most likely.

However, everything depends on the publication of the results in the Diário da República, as article 173 of the Constitution establishes that “the Assembly of the Republic meets in its own right on the third day after the calculation of the general results of the elections”.

This publication, in turn, depends on whether or not there are appeals on the vote count – which should end on March 20th – and whether or not the National Elections Commission (CNE) exhausts the maximum publication period, which is eight days.

Without complaints, but with the CNE running out of publication deadline, the first meeting of the new parliament of the 16th legislature could only take place after Easter, on April 1st.

According to a CNE notice, the assemblies to collect and count votes from residents abroad will meet on the 18th, 19th and 20th of March, starting at 9:00 am on each day, at the Lisbon Congress Center.

If any party considers that there were irregularities in the count, it has 24 hours to lodge an appeal, as long as there was a complaint or protest “presented at the time it occurred”.

In the eight days following receipt of the general tabulation minutes of all electoral districts, the CNE prepares and publishes in the 1st series of the Diário da República an official map with the results of the elections.

At the leaders’ conference meeting, the discussion on the distribution of seats in the future hemicycle, which will feature nine political forces, with the return of the CDS-PP to parliament was also debated, but not concluded.

The CDS-PP should be seated between Chega and IL and with a seat in the front row, a claim conveyed at the meeting by the PSD, which gives up one of its seats at the front in favor of the Christian Democrats, which, according to sources parliamentarians, was consensual.

However, the seat distribution map for the first session has not yet been finalized, with divergent intentions from BE, PCP and Chega.

While the four deputies due to emigration are yet to be determined, the Democratic Alliance (AD), which brings together PSD, CDS and PPM, with 29.49%, won 79 deputies in the Assembly of the Republic, in Sunday’s legislative elections, against 77 for the PS (28.66%), followed by Chega with 48 elected deputies (18.06%).

IL, with eight seats, BE, with five, and PAN, with one, maintained the number of deputies. Livre went from one to four elected representatives while the CDU lost two seats and was left with four deputies.

The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, has already started listening to parties and coalitions with parliamentary representation, in a process that began on Tuesday and will only end on the 20th, the date on which he will receive the AD.