“I‘m going to support someone who is outside a system that has been tiring the Portuguese people, and whoever says it’s not tiring is a hypocrite, just talk to people on the street daily,” he stated.
Alberto João Jardim, who led the Social Democratic executive in Madeira from 1978 to 2015, spoke before a dinner with the admiral in Câmara de Lobos, in the western area of the island, attended by a small group of supporters of his candidacy.
“I am against partitocracy, I am against the monopoly of parties in controlling the legislative power and in the power of candidacies to the Legislative Assembly,” he affirmed.
“In coherence, I had to support someone coming from civil society,” he reiterated.
Jardim argued that “a military person is not, by status, mixed with the parties,” emphasizing that “a military person is, by essence, also civil society.”
The former president of the Regional Government and the PSD/Madeira highlighted his friendship with the candidate supported by the national party, Luís Marques Mendes, but considered that he will not win.
“A few months ago I took care to say that I am sorry that Marques Mendes is a candidate, because I would not like to see him lose an election,” he said.
“I think the Social Democratic Party by choosing its own candidate, which it usually did not do, as it allowed freedom to the militants, has underlined that partitocratic character, that is, of controlling the political system exclusively by the parties, which needs to be fought,” he added.
Meanwhile, Henrique Gouveia e Melo, who has been in Madeira since Friday, highlighted the importance of Alberto João Jardim’s support, considering his “historical past” and the “contribution he made to autonomy, to the region, and to Portuguese politics.”
“It is an individual support, as I always wish, and I am very happy to have his support,” he declared.
The candidate for President of the Republic also emphasized that if elected, he will do everything to maintain and deepen autonomies “as much as possible.”
Gouveia e Melo, who will travel to the island of Porto Santo on Sunday, where he concludes his three-day visit to the region, promised, on the other hand, to spend some days in the sub-archipelago of the Selvagens, about 300 kilometers south of Madeira, if he is the “chosen one” of the Portuguese for the Presidency of the Republic.
“I am truly Portuguese […] and I think we should show what our true sovereign intentions are over that territory,” he said, recalling that “there has been much discussion about the sovereignty of the territory.”
Therefore, he argued, “there is nothing like the constituted political power showing very clearly to the international community” what it thinks about the matter.
Gouveia e Melo also considered it important to visit the autonomous regions as part of the electoral campaign, regardless of the number of votes this might represent.
“Both Madeira and the Azores contribute to an Atlantic Portugal in such an important way that we can never ignore these two archipelagos, it is a matter of affirmation of the state itself,” he argued.
