The deputy of the Liberal Initiative (IL) in the Azores considered that the leader of the regional PS, in the congress that ended this Sunday, wanted to “talk about the future but it was a reckoning with the past.”
“It was a speech that was very much within the PS. A speech that pretends to talk about the future, but ends up being a settling of accounts with the past”, observed Nuno Barata, also regional leader of IL, in statements to Lusa, after the closing of the XVIII PS/Azores Regional Congress, which ended this Sunday. in the city of Horta, island of Faial.
For the parliamentarian, “more than statistics” presented on various indicators in the region, before and after 24 years of socialist management (between 1996 and 2020, the last eight under the presidency of Vasco Cordeiro), “what matters is knowing if The Region has not converged with the other regions of the European Union”.
“From an IL perspective, it hasn’t converged. The statistics are also there to show that we did not converge”, lamented the deputy, with whom the regional PSD made a parliamentary advocacy agreement after the 2020 regional elections.
Currently, Nuno Barata considered, the region “is still not doing better.”
“It is expected to improve, but if the ‘modus operandi’ does not change, I am afraid that we will not have the expected results in the near future,” he observed.
The leader of the PS/Azores said this Sunday that “a new cycle” has been opened and “the best of the PS/Azores has returned” for the future Region, because the party has the “responsibility and legitimacy of not leaving the Azores behind ”.
“We have the historical and political legitimacy and the responsibility not to let the Azores be left behind. We have the responsibility to move the Azores forward”, said Vasco Cordeiro.
After the PS spent 24 years in the government of the Region, and having lost power to the PSD/CDS-PP/PPM coalition, Vasco Cordeiro has “a dream and an ambition” – of “freedom, solidarity and respect” in the future of the Azores.
The leader of the PS/Azores, re-elected in April for a fourth term as president of the regional structure, with 97.7% of the votes, warned that politics in the Azores “runs the risk of becoming more of a pitched battle than in a serious debate .about the future”.
PS was the party with the most votes in the 2020 regional elections, electing 25 parliamentarians, but lost the absolute majority it had held in the Region for 24 years.
PSD, CDS-PP and PPM, which together represent 26 deputies, signed an agreement to form a government.
The coalition also signed a parliamentary advocacy agreement with Chega and with the independent deputy Carlos Furtado (ex-Chega) and the PSD an agreement with IL.
The Legislative Assembly of the Azores is made up of 57 deputies and, in the current legislature, 25 are from the PS, 21 from the PSD, three from the CDS-PP, two from the PPM, two from the BE, one from the Liberal Initiative, one from the PAN, one from Chega and one independent deputy (elected by Chega).
Source: Observadora
