Seven PSD activists, including Miguel Corte-Real and Rui Gomes da Silva, defend understanding with Chega

The manifesto is called Portugal First, is signed by seven social-democratic activists and has a fundamental idea: if the PSD does not build a “non-socialist alternative” for a stable government, which would necessarily include Chega, “it will be doing the left game.” The challenge to Luís Montenegro to deviate from his refusal to make understandings with André Ventura’s party is revealed this Tuesday by “Diário de Notícias” and has former deputy Miguel Corte-Real, who leads the PSD bench in the Porto Municipal Assembly, and Rui Gomes da Silva, former minister of Parliamentary Affairs, as more media-savvy subscribers.

The document – ​​which is also signed by Paulo Ramalheira Teixeira, former mayor of Castelo de Paiva (and who led the municipality when the Entre-os-Rios Bridge fell), the doctor Manuel Pinto Coelho, the economists João Saracho de Almeida and Susana Faria, and Paulo Jorge Teixeira, president of the Cooperativa do Povo Portuense – calls for “a right-wing government solution, without fear and much less conditioned by what the extreme left wants”, in order to avoid “Governments without stability and short-term, which will not serve the country’s interests in any way.”

To “put Portugal first”, it is also written, “focus, responsibility and sense of State” are necessary to “build a stable Government, with a solid majority, that can carry out the reforms that the country needs”. Something that, according to the subscribers of this manifesto, can only be achieved with a majority on the right that would necessarily include the PSD allied with Chega, contradicting the “no is no” thesis that Luís Montenegro has been defending for months.

However, also to DN, Rui Gomes da Silva admits that the chances of there being a change of direction are very low: “If I didn’t have hope I wouldn’t have supported this idea, but that hope is residual, so is it”.