A Coligação Evoluir Oeiras denied on Thursday that militants from Bloco de Esquerda and Livre were responsible for removing the cardboard placards placed on the streets by Isaltino Morais’s campaign, the current mayor of Oeiras, who is running for re-election.
“The Coligação Evoluir Oeiras obviously rejects the unfounded accusation – and as such, unproven – that we would have removed Isaltino’s cardboard figures from the streets. Figures that, moreover, lack any identification required for electoral propaganda materials,” stated a communiqué sent to Notícias ao Minuto.
The coalition, which includes Bloco de Esquerda, Livre, and Volt, further pointed out that the placement of these images posed risks to pedestrians and drivers, besides reducing accessibility.
“Isaltino and his campaign should have been more careful not to place material that restricts visibility at roundabouts, hinders sidewalks, or blocks the propaganda material of other duly identified candidacies,” the note reads, emphasizing: “We are not involved in the removal and can only speculate about it, not surprised if the responsibility lies with the competent authorities given all the outlined problems – or even if the INOV candidacy itself realized and removed them on its own, now trying to shift the blame for the error made.”
The statement also mentions that they are focused on other issues rather than these “false claims.” “The only Isaltino Morais that the Coligação Evoluir Oeiras wants to remove is the one in flesh and blood. We want to democratically oust him from the presidency of the Oeiras City Council, this coming Sunday, election day,” they state, acknowledging that although this is a “complicated and laborious” task, they do not want to “waste much time on false and unproven statements or other misdeeds Isaltino Morais commits in this campaign, as is typical of his actions.”
The Accusations from Isaltino Morais’s Campaign
It should be noted that the accusations laid out by Isaltino Morais’s campaign were made on Wednesday when a Facebook post reacted to statements by the Livre leader, Rui Tavares. The post reads that Tavares “stated that the ‘isaltinos’ were illegal and that, for that reason, we had removed them.”
“Portuguese law provides for the freedom of posting political propaganda, as such, there is no illegality in that action,” the campaign note states, clarifying that “the ‘isaltinos’ were not removed” by the candidate’s movement.
“So far, we thought they were abducted by Oeirenses admirers of their Mayor’s work (as can be seen in many social media posts),” they joked, concluding: “Given the Livre leader’s statements, we now believe that the ‘isaltinos’ were removed in an action by Livre and Bloco de Esquerda militants. The parties and regimes inspired by Trotskyism have a habit of making their opponents disappear. In this case, they would have started by removing images of the opponent,” they accuse, adding that they understand “the difficulty of radical parties in accepting the creativity of political action.”
Notably, in the note, Isaltino Morais does not mention Volt, or even Chega, whose candidate for Oeiras City Council, Pedro Frazão, also criticized.
