PSD withdraws Aguiar-Branco’s candidacy for president of the Assembly of the Republic

More than half of the deputies voted blank in the first election and the Social Democrats decided not to repeat the vote

José Pedro Aguiar-Branco failed the first election for president of the Assembly of the Republic. The PSD deputy failed the election with 89 votes in favor, 134 blank and 7 null, in the first plenary session of the XVI legislature. Immediately, the PSD decided to withdraw the candidacy of the former Minister of Defense, avoiding the possibility of a new lead, which would definitively remove the deputy from an election for the position.

The rules of the Assembly of the Republic determine that the president of Parliament is elected at the first plenary meeting of the legislature by an absolute majority of the votes of the deputies in office (116).

“If none of the candidates obtains this number of votes, a second ballot will immediately take place, in which only the two candidates with the most votes who have not withdrawn their candidacy will compete. If no candidate is elected, the process is reopened”, states the Rules.

António Filipe, who presided over the first plenary session, declared the candidate “not elected”.

The PSD parliamentary leader, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, immediately asked for work to be interrupted for 30 minutes, which was granted, resuming at 5:30 pm.

The vote is secret, but it is certain that most of Chega’s 50 deputies, if not all, voted against. This is because 80 of the 89 favorable votes will come from PSD and CDS.

It turns out to be a turnaround, since Chega’s president, André Ventura, had announced this Monday that he had reached an agreement with the PSD so that both could make the proposed names viable.

“The PSD informed Chega this afternoon that it will facilitate the appointment of several party leaders as vice-president of the Assembly of the Republic, secretary and vice-secretary”, he said, referring to Diogo Pacheco de Amorim, Filipe Melo and Pedro Frazão, respectively.

André Ventura added that, “following this information” which he said had been transmitted to Chega’s parliamentary leader Pedro Pinto, he would also meet with his parliamentary group and tell deputies “to make the proposal that the AD presented for the presidency viable of parliament”, referring to former Defense Minister José Pedro Aguiar-Branco.

“I want to highlight this understanding, the reciprocity of this understanding”, he stated, adding that it will also make viable the name proposed by IL for vice-president, deputy Rodrigo Saraiva.

History repeats itself once

It is necessary to go back to 2011, in the XII legislature, when PSD and CDS-PP had an absolute majority, for a single candidate for president of the Assembly of the Republic to fail in the election: Fernando Nobre failed to obtain the necessary absolute majority in two consecutive elections for president of parliament – having then obtained 106 and 105 votes, in the two rounds – and did not run for a third.

In 2015, the social democratic candidate Fernando Negrão lost to the PS candidate, Ferro Rodrigues, but still managed to obtain 108 votes against 120, well above the 89 currently collected by Aguiar-Branco.

Only former Defense Minister José Pedro Aguiar-Branco competed in this Tuesday’s election, which Chega publicly expressed that it would support, saying that the Social Democrats would also give an indication so that their candidates for ‘vice’ and secretaries could be approved. of the table.

In the 16th legislature, PSD and PS each have 78 deputies, Chega 50 parliamentarians, IL eight, BE five and PCP and Livre four each. The PAN maintains a single deputy and the CDS-PP returned to parliament with two deputies.

In other words, PSD, CDS-PP and Chega have a total of 130 parliamentarians, which should be more than enough for the election, which is, however, carried out by secret vote.

The election of the president of parliament in which the 230 deputies were called, in alphabetical order, to vote in a ballot box in the center of the session room, lasted around one hour and 15 minutes. When voting, the deputies signed for the first time a term of office in which they swore to comply with the Constitution.

Afterwards, the voting was carried out by the secretaries of the Bureau and parliamentary staff in the middle of the hemicycle, and it was clear that there was a lot of votes much larger than the others, at the time without the media knowing that they were blank votes.

The deputies should then elect the remaining Board of the Assembly of the Republic, made up of four vice-presidents, four secretaries and four vice-secretaries, a process that cannot proceed without the president of the parliament being elected.