TO THE MINUTE | And on the fourth it was once and for all: Aguiar-Branco elected president of the AR after an agreement between PS and PSD for a divided presidency

More than 24 hours later, the PS’s first reaction emerged about the impasse in the Assembly of the Republic. In detail, the socialist general secretary, Pedro Nuno Santos, explained everything that happened behind the scenes of Parliament.

“We, and I think a large part of the country, assumed that there was an understanding on the right. The right was unable to approve the name that the PSD presented. The PS presents its candidate to try to resolve the impasse. The impasse remains and, obviously, we could not make a parliamentary impasse, an institutional impasse, persist and, at the initiative of the PS, it was presented to resolve the impasse,” he said.

Given what happened, Pedro Nuno Santos explains that he had “a meeting with the AD leader”, that Luís Montenegro “did not present any solution to resolve the impasse” and that it was the PS that suggested the option of a shared presidency.

“In the same way that I had the opportunity to say that we would never allow a constitutional impasse by approving rejection motions, we would also not live with a parliamentary impasse and, therefore, the PS, as a responsible party that wants to preserve democratic institutions in our country, made a proposal that would allow us to resolve and continue with parliamentary and political work to truly focus on the country’s problems”, explained Pedro Nuno Santos.

With all this, the secretary general of the PS notes that “what the AD has shown is that it does not have a stable parliamentary solution nor does it have a stable government solution” and that “the leader of the AD has shown that he does not have the capacity for initiative and leadership to resolve impasses like the one of the last 24 hours”.