“I will support someone who is outside a system that has been exhausting the Portuguese, and anyone who says otherwise is a hypocrite; just talk to people on the street day by day,” he stated.
Alberto João Jardim, who led the Madeiran social-democratic executive from 1978 to 2015, spoke before a dinner with the admiral in Câmara de Lobos, in the western part of the island, which gathered a small group of supporters for his candidacy.
“I am against party cracy, I am against the monopoly of parties in controlling legislative power and in the power of candidacies to the Legislative Assembly,” he declared.
“In coherence, I had to support someone coming from civil society,” he reinforced.
Jardim considered that “a military man is not, by statute, mixed with parties,” emphasizing that “a military man is, by essence, also civil society.”
The former president of the Regional Government and PSD/Madeira highlighted, on the other hand, his friendship with the candidate supported by the national party, Luís Marques Mendes, but stated that he will not win.
“A few months ago, I took care to say that I regret that Marques Mendes is a candidate because I wouldn’t like to see him lose an election,” he said.
“I think the Social Democratic Party, by choosing its own candidate, which they usually did not do, [since] they gave freedom to the militants, further emphasized that party-controlled character, that is, the exclusive control of the political system 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’m very happy to have his support,” he declared.
The presidential candidate also emphasized that if elected, he will do everything to maintain and deepen the autonomies “as much as possible.”
Gouveia e Melo, who will visit the island of Porto Santo on Sunday, concluding a three-day visit to the region, promised, moreover, to spend a few days in the Selvagens sub-archipelago, 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 must show what our true sovereign intentions over that territory are,” he said, recalling that “there has been a lot of discussion about the sovereignty of the territory.”
Therefore, he argued, “there is nothing like the constituted political power to show very clearly to the international community” its stance on the subject.
Gouveia e Melo also considered it important to visit the autonomous regions within the electoral campaign, regardless of the number of votes this may 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 affirming the state itself,” he argued.
