On the day he received the letter from his grandmother’s maid, Montenegro beat Tino de Rans in the market and walked away from the party machine. “Today the PSD and CDS are in the minority”

AD leader brought Luís Filipe Menezes and Rui Moreira to anticipate the attack on Costa. In Trofa, where he brought together three thousand people for a lunch rally, Montenegro also criticized the political parties themselves, “which are more concerned with talking to each other and for themselves than talking about the people”

For a matter of minutes, Luís Montenegro was unaware of the Blitzkrieg launched by Tino de Rans at the Amarante market, where the social democratic leader had a campaign action planned during the morning. “The fair is for everyone”, the RiR candidate arrived half an hour before the Democratic Alliance delegation filled the venue, and, carrying a basket, announced that he had “gifts with him”: paving stones signed by him, which he distributed to three vegetable and fruit sellers. Meanwhile, he filled his lungs with air and told whoever listened to him that he, Tino, is not “mortgageable” and that he will be the voice of the people. “The people will arrive at Parliament free, without being mortgaged to anyone”.

With him he brought a delegation of two bandeirantes who, at one point, started running with the candidate up the street. “I want to, but he’s the one who won’t wait for Tino”, he said, evaluating a possible meeting that he eventually gave up on, at the same time as he stood on a wall overlooking the market, armed with two paving stones in each hand and with a fixed argument. “I’m one of the people, I’m not like the others!”

Almost everything separates Tino de Rans from Luís Montenegro. The size of the campaign action, the proximity with which people approach it and the laughter it caused among traders in that market. But the message he was trying to convey, with all his might, while a screen glued to his van drowned out the first songs in support of the Democratic Alliance, ended up having some similarities with the self-portrait that, in recent days, Montenegro has been trying to paint.

It is Hugo Soares himself, secretary general of the PSD, who recognizes this. “Luís is one of us, he is like any other Portuguese”, he announced during the afternoon at a rally in Braga. Giving strength, precisely, to one of the most repeated attacks by Montenegro in almost all campaign actions during the last week: “the Socialist Party leaves the State as a party and the party as a whole in the State” in opposition to the AD candidate who has repeated throughout the campaign that “only uses the party as a means to reach the Government and then be able to change people’s lives”.

To support this figure, Montenegro has often tried to distance itself from the notion that it is part of a political party, but rather a movement that prefers independent and recognized figures from civil society, sometimes to those who emerge from party machine. He has demonstrated this, linking himself practically every day to a rejection of the comments and criticisms made by the PS and Pedro Nuno Santos, which, for him, are nothing more than “intrigue of the political parties that are more concerned with talking among themselves and for themselves than talking about the people.”

“We are sorry”, he said, during a lunch-rally in Trofa this afternoon, which brought together around 3 thousand people and which had Rui Moreira, an independent, as the main figure. “PSD and CDS-PP activists are in the minority in this room today, but that is a good sign. It is a sign that we are not closed, we are open to society, open to talking to people and solving the problems they face.”

Political scientist José Filipe Pinto guarantees that this strategy is essential to obtain the votes of undecided voters and voters from the center and notes that the candidate’s own speech is changing: “If we look at the evolution of Luís Montenegro’s speech, we notice that the phrases are increasingly shorter and easier, and have a direct style marked by assertiveness”, he highlights, highlighting that the current president of the PSD is drinking from Cavaco Silva’s teachings. “He is creating an image of authenticity and security, pointing to the idea of ​​being an affable and understanding person, without entering into an overly popular regime”.

José Filipe Pinto states that this idea of ​​revisiting Cavaquista is only possible because Luís Montenegro ends up having within his support base those who get their hands dirty in the political fight for him. In addition to Passos Coelho who, “with his speech on immigration and security, ended up helping to stop the migration of votes from PSD to Chega”, there is also Nuno Melo who has joined the fight against Pedro Nuno Santos much more , Mariana Mortágua and André Ventura, with “a more popular, combative and down-to-earth language”.

At the market he visited this Saturday, in Amarante, this image of Montenegro seems to be sticking with voters. The same merchant who applauded and smiled at Tino de Rans when he said that only he wants to know about the people’s problems, said, minutes later, that his vote is fixed on the Democratic Alliance. “I think it does a lot of good to move away from party speech, because we need change”, says Maria do Carmo, 69 years old, pointing to the tomatoes she has for sale.

On that visit, Montenegro ended up having a surprise. Paulo Vasconcelos, 55 years old, waited for the candidate to come down the market stairs to hand him a letter from Rosário, a 102-year-old woman who was employed for nine years by her maternal grandmother from Montenegro, who lived in São Gonçalo. “She was treated as if she were a daughter by these grandparents from Montenegro and when she heard the name of the candidate, she followed the story and wrote to him about the gratitude she still has today because she was treated as if she were family at a time, in the 1930s, where the bosses were severe”, he told CNN Portugal.

Luís Filipe Menezes and Rui Moreira. Montenegro’s trump cards on António Costa’s day

On the same day that António Costa joined Pedro Nuno Santos’ campaign, the Democratic Alliance brought the mayor of Porto, Rui Moreira, and the former leader of the PSD, Luís Filipe Menezes.

Rui Moreira, independent and close friend of Montenegro, spoke at a lunch rally in Trofa where he asked for more incentives for companies and the private sector. “We need to turn off the complicómeter”, he declared, calling for a State with less bureaucracy and ideology. Menezes said that bringing Costa into the campaign was a “desperate attempt to whitewash the failure”.

“The State is buried in ideology, in the phobia of merit”, criticized Moreira. “When something goes wrong, an institute, an observatory, an office is created, it’s always like that.” The mayor then turned to the middle class, highlighting that they cannot be the ones to “support the social state with their taxes, and then they do not benefit from them”.

Luís Filipe Menezes, on the other hand, was more combative and immediately attacked Pedro Nuno Santos, during the rally in Braga. impromptu speech, criticized the socialist leader for “comparing himself to Cavaco Silva” after he criticized an article that the former prime minister wrote for Correio da Manhã in which he accused Pedro Nuno of “not meeting the minimum requirements” to reach to the Government. “I know that the PS leader loves luxury cars, but comparing himself to Cavaco Silva is like comparing a Ferrari to a jalopy leaning in the garage.”