Miguel Albuquerque won the elections in the PSD of Madeira, defeating his opponent, Manuel António Correia, by 2246 votes against 1854, out of a total of 4388 registered voters, indicated the party secretariat.
The electoral event took place following the political crisis caused by the dismissal, in January, of the president of the Regional Government (PSD/CDS), Miguel Albuquerque, after being named a defendant in a judicial investigation into suspected corruption in the archipelago.
In January, after a judicial investigation related to signs of corruption, the president of the Regional Government of Madeira was named a defendant and later resigned. In this process, the president of the Chamber of Funchal, the social democrat Pedro Calado, was arrested and resigned from office, with the investigating judge concluding that there were no “serious signs” of crimes. The mayor was released 21 days later. The same happened to two businessmen.
Thus, the resolution of the political crisis generated in Madeira now depends on the decision of the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who can only intervene in the process after March 24, when the Legislative Assembly has been in office for six months.
This was the second time that Miguel Albuquerque beat Manuel António Correia in an internal dispute for the party presidency, with the first confrontation taking place in 2014, to choose the successor to the historic leader Alberto João Jardim.
At the time, Albuquerque defeated Manuel António Correia, then regional secretary for the Environment and Natural Resources, in a second round, obtaining around 63% of the votes, and has remained the party’s leader to date, always running again without an opponent in the elections. internal.
Miguel Albuquerque, born on May 4, 1961 (62 years old) and born in Funchal, is a lawyer and has on his political CV the presidency of the Chamber of Funchal (1994-2013) and of the Regional Government of Madeira, since 2015.
