PSD bank elects two new vice presidents with 75% of the vote

The PSD parliamentary group met for the first time this Thursday, led by Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, and elected two new bank vice-chairs, Alexandre Poço and Luís Gomes, with 75% of the vote.

According to an official source from the faction, 69 of the 77 PSD deputies voted (former party and bank presidents, Rui Rio and Paulo Mota Pinto, two were absent), with 58 in favour, nine blanks and two zeros.

In this way, JSD leader Alexandre Poço and the former mayor of Vila Real de Santo António Luís Gomes were elected with 75% of the vote of the bank, well above the almost 60% obtained by the parliament speaker and the rest of the board of directors last. week. .

At today’s meeting, it was first necessary to amend the bank’s internal rules – which allowed only a maximum of ten vice-chairmen since 2020 – which, according to the delegates present, happened with one arm in the air and unanimously.

Then a vote was taken on one of the two new ‘vices’.

At the end of the meeting, which discussed the draft amendments to the Rules of Order of the Assembly of the Republic, the last discussion of which took place in September, the new Speaker of Parliament made no statements to the media.

Last week, when she presented her list to the board of the parliamentary group, Miranda Sarmento had already informed the bank that she intended to change the regulation immediately after her direction was chosen and had informed which future ‘deputies’ she was electing. wanted to see.

Alexandre Poço and Luís Gomes, two supporters of the new PSD president Luís Montenegro, join the ten vice presidents elected last week.

Of these, four have moved from the previous direction – Ricardo Baptista Leite, Catarina Rocha Ferreira, Paulo Rios de Oliveira and Paula Cardoso – and six are new: Hugo Carneiro, former deputy secretary general of Rio, and five supporters of the current president of the – the leader of the district of Santarém, João Moura, the leader of the district of Leiria, Hugo Oliveira, the former mayor of Espinho, Joaquim Pinto Moreira, and the deputies Andreia Neto and Clara Marques Mendes.

In the elections held last week, Miranda Sarmento’s board of 77 deputies on the bench had 46 votes in favour, 20 blank and 10 zero (and one deputy, former PSD chairman Rui Rio, did not vote).

In other words, if we add up the blanks and the zeros, there were 30 deputies who did not give their ‘approval’ to the new chairman of the bank, who will have an expanded leadership of 43 elements (in theory he had only three more votes than the members making up the list).

With this result, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento was well below the 92% achieved by his predecessor, Paulo Mota Pinto, the 81% achieved by Adão Silva in September 2020, and the 89.8% achieved by former party chairman Rui Rio in November 2020. 2019, but above the result of Fernando Negrão who was elected leader of the PSD faction in February 2018 with only 39% of the vote.

The former PSD Speaker of Parliament, Paulo Mota Pinto, was elected on April 7 with a favorable vote from 71 of the 77 Social Democratic deputies (92%), two white and two zero, with two deputies absent from the ballot.

The day before the start of the PSD congress inaugurating the new leadership, Paulo Mota Pinto announced that he would call early elections for the leadership of the bank after being informed by Luís Montenegro that he intended to direct the leadership of the bank. change couch.