The political convention featured 18 motions, with only one being rejected. The discarded motion criticized the party’s insufficient attention to individual freedoms and urged the rejection of concepts like “gender ideology” and the “woke movement,” advocating for the protection of all minorities, including LGBTQIA+.
Among those approved was the motion titled “Against Hate, for Freedom!”, which called on the IL to be as vocal in defending social and individual political freedoms as it has been in advocating for economic freedom, amid rising hate speech and crimes.
This motion was passed with 223 votes in favor, 98 against, and 125 abstentions. It was introduced by party member Filipe Mendonça, who criticized the party’s direction and warned that, in the face of hate crimes, “silence is complicity, absence is abandonment, abstention is complicity,” referencing IL’s parliamentary abstention in a condemnation vote against an attack on the theater company “A Barraca.”
On individual rights, another motion titled “Feminism is Liberalism” was also approved. Advocates, including several party members, called for more attention to this topic amid increasing misogynistic rhetoric, particularly among younger demographics.
The motion “Nationality with Responsibility—Integration with Rules, Not Postponement out of Fear” was approved as well. This motion urged the party to oppose extending the residency requirement for nationality to ten years, as advocated by the government.
Several speakers supported this motion, highlighting that extending the requirement to ten years would hinder immigrant integration into Portuguese society and could render children stateless.
Rodrigo Saraiva, a deputy and Vice-President of the Assembly of the Republic, proposed the motion “Foreign Policy as a Beacon of Freedom,” which received broad approval. In his presentation, he opposed managing diplomacy as a matter of “convenience or mere protocol.”
“Talking about freedom in Lisbon isn’t enough if we ignore what’s happening in Tbilisi, Kabul, Havana, or Gaza,” he stated.
Rodrigo Saraiva emphasized that “many of those currently dominating the international stage, from Moscow to Beijing, Tehran to Caracas and Maputo, dismiss the liberties” thought to be guaranteed.
“They neither hide nor disguise their intentions. They are openly at war against the values that define us: liberal democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Meanwhile, too many democracies have responded with hesitation, diplomatic silences, and a kind of ashamed neutrality that, in practice, is complicity,” he argued.
Rodrigo Saraiva rejected this path and advocated for “a foreign policy centered on individuals, not regimes’ convenience, with a firm condemnation of dictatorships and solidarity with the people living under them, even if it means diplomatic discomfort, and an increased presence in NATO, the European Union, and CPLP, not as extras but as actors with a voice, proposals, and principles.”
Among other approved motions was an initiative advocating for electronic voting implementation and a set of measures to ensure IL establishes itself as a “municipal party” by the 2029 elections.
Nineteen sectoral motions were initially submitted, but one advocating a “liberal, transparent and healthy cultural patronage” was withdrawn after its main proponent, João Méndez Fernandes, was unable to register or attend the convention.
