The CDS-PP/Madeira goes to the early regional elections with its own list, prepared for understandings and refusing to be a “cane” or “extension” of the PSD, according to the head of the party structure’s list, José Manuel Rodrigues.
“The CDS is not focused on coalitions. Not even with the PSD”, said the candidate in an interview with the Lusa agency, at the end of the second legislature in which the two parties were together in the Regional Government (in 2019, when the Social Democrats lost their absolute majority, they formed a post-electoral coalition and in 2023 they ran together).
José Manuel de Sousa Rodrigues, a journalist by profession, has served as president of the Legislative Assembly of Madeira since October 15, 2019.
“Just two months ago, Miguel Albuquerque’s PSD understood that the CDS was not necessary for a coalition and, therefore, from this point of view, we have to take the necessary consequences, especially because we were loyal to the PSD and the PSD did not respect the CDS”, he explained.
The head of the Christian Democrat list, who was president of the CDS-PP/Madeira between 1997 and 2015 and returned to leadership in April, considers that “nothing will be the same again in the relationship between the CDS and PSD”.
“The CDS is not a PSD stick, which the PSD uses whenever it wants. The CDS is a founding party of democracy and autonomy that must be respected. We are also not an extension of the PSD”, he declared.
Rodrigues, who has been a member of the CDS-PP since 1976 and was leader of the Juventude Centrista Madeiran, said, on the other hand, that he was “prepared for parliamentary understandings with all political forces that are not extremist, whether left or right”.
In his opinion, “absolute majorities of a single party are history” and it is necessary “to have conversations between all political parties” for a governability solution.
Born on July 13, 1960 (he is 63 years old) in the parish of Santa Maria Maior, in the municipality of Funchal, where he lives, he highlighted that he has been “doing politics for 30 years” and never sets limits for electoral acts, ensuring that ” the CDS will always be part of a solution and will contribute to political stability and governability”.
The candidate, who was also a municipal deputy in Funchal, emphasized that, in the May 26 elections, he will not “ask Madeirans which party they come from if they vote for the CDS”.
“I just want to know if they want to walk with the CDS and where they want to go with the CDS. And I will know how to interpret on the night of the elections whatever the sovereign will of Madeirans is, transmitted on that day”, he reinforced.
The objective in the elections, he added, “is to have the best possible result and contribute to a government solution that resolves some of Madeira’s structural problems.”
Regarding the party’s main proposals, he pointed out as priorities the expansion of autonomy and the reform of the regional political system, considering that “autonomy has fallen into an impasse”.
“We need to have more powers and competencies in several areas, but particularly in the legislative branch. Also to create our own tax system”, he highlighted.
Until this objective is achieved, at a time when the Regional Government recorded a growth in tax revenue “to levels never seen before”, it defends a reduction of 7.5% per year in VAT (Value Added Tax) to be reached at the end of the legislature the 30% reduction provided for in the Regional Finance Law.
For José Manuel Rodrigues, who has completed the former secondary school course (equivalent to the 12th year of schooling), Madeira’s economic growth in recent years “has not been accompanied by greater social justice”, which is why he proposes “a great agreement of income and productivity within the scope of the Social Coordination Council to raise wages” in the archipelago.
Another of the recommended measures aims to settle young graduates in the region, to reverse the wave of emigration, establishing a base salary for when they enter the job market.
The CDS-PP has always been represented in the Legislative Assembly of Madeira.
In the last regional elections, on September 24, 2023, the PSD/CDS-PP Somos Madeira coalition had 58,394 votes (44.31%) and elected 23 deputies, out of a total of 47, three of which were Christian Democrat parliamentarians. The CDS also guaranteed two portfolios in the executive – Economy and Fisheries.
The president of the Regional Government, Miguel Albuquerque — who is now head of the list again — resigned in January, after being named a defendant in a court case for alleged corruption. The executive has been in management since then.
After the dismissal, the CDS/Madeira defended the immediate departure of the social democrat and the appointment, by the PSD, of a replacement.
