“It’s time to close a cycle”: Pedro Costa resigns as president of the Campo de Ourique Board

Pedro Costa, member of the PS National Political Commission and son of former Prime Minister António Costa, has served as president of the Campo de Ourique Parish Council since 2020, having been reappointed in these roles in the 2021 local elections.

Supporter of Pedro Nuno Santos’ candidacy for PS leadership last December – and one of the main elements in the so-called “hard core” of the socialist campaign in the last legislative elections -, Pedro Costa understands that “it is time to close a cycle of almost ten years of executive functions in Lisbon and pass the testimony”.

“I know that my departure will give Campo de Ourique, in this project that is much more than me, new energy and, I hope, greater availability on the part of the municipal executive to look for points of contact and make necessary investments in our neighborhood. I wish luckiest of all, to my successor, Hugo Vieira da Silva, who I have no doubt will have the ingenuity and art to guarantee effective models to make this common agenda that we have built a reality and project Ourique field for the future”, he states, in a letter to that the Lusa agency had access to.

In this letter, which he will deliver to the Parish President today, he states that in 2017 he accepted the challenge of dedicating himself “full time” to Campo de Ourique, with “ambition and energy, creativity in the search for solutions”.

“I feel that I fulfilled what I promised to those who entrusted me with this mission, I dedicated these eight years to searching, until exhaustion, for solutions to the day-to-day problems of this neighborhood and with the same guiding principle: One neighborhood, for everyone, from Avenida de Ceuta to Largo do Rato. I took over the presidency of the Parish Council in 2020, in a year that seemed like it couldn’t get any worse, I watched from the front row the response that this very distinct community gave collectively in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, he points out. .

“Despite the exhaustion this meant, I couldn’t ask for greater honor, I couldn’t be more proud of this opportunity, no matter how challenging and brutal these days were, which still weigh on all of us today.“, he adds.

While serving as president of the Campo de Ourique Parish Council, he argues that he made progress “in implementing existing plans, in the recovery and return of public space” and in prioritizing “green and leisure spaces”.

“We protect the health of residents, combat inequalities and isolation. Ensuring that everyone experienced the neighborhood in the same way, regardless of their social class, their age and the street where they live. So we assumed planning and participation as priorities, there were hundreds of hours of debate on all topics, resulting in the conclusions of which neighborhood we want by the end of 2030“, he adds in his letter.