Áfter a meeting with the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, at the Palace of Belém, André Ventura was questioned regarding the Constitutional Court’s decision.
Initially, Ventura stated that the party “already has a convention scheduled” and that this decision “has no impact” because the party was already planning to schedule a major meeting “anyway.”
When asked about the date of the national convention, Ventura replied that a meeting of the National Council had already been scheduled for September, which will call for this convention.
According to the judgment from May, to which the Lusa agency had access, the judges at Ratton Palace decided to “deny the appeal” filed by Chega, thus confirming the invalidation of the election of the national bodies at the VI National Convention of the Chega Party, held from January 12 to 14, 2024.
In October of the previous year, the Constitutional Court had also invalidated the election of the national bodies of the party held at the penultimate convention, which took place in Santarém in January 2023.
In a note sent today to Lusa, members Gregório Teixeira and Fernando Nóbrega warned of “the serious situation of illegality in which the party finds itself.”
These two members had previously filed lawsuits challenging the election of the table and the national bodies of Chega elected at the VI Convention.
The two challenged Chega’s internal elections, with Fernando Nóbrega’s being the first to receive a decision from the court – the invalidation of the election of the national bodies – and Gregório Teixeira eventually withdrew his.
The Chega members say they are “exhausted from witnessing, since 2019, a repeated pattern of internal manipulation, lack of democratic scrutiny and total control of the party by André Ventura, who has led it as a personal and autocratic project.”
“With the judicial annulment of the 2024 elections, Chega has no valid governing bodies. Its current structure is null and nonexistent in the eyes of the law. The only legally subsisting bodies are those from the party’s foundation in 2019, of a technical and provisional nature, whose legitimacy expired a long time ago,” they add.
