Ana Mendes Godinho spoke at the PS National Municipal Convention held today in Coimbra. Scheduled to appear alongside her was former Finance Minister and previous Mayor of Lisbon, Fernando Medina, who was unable to attend due to unforeseen circumstances.
The candidate for Sintra argued that “living conditions have worsened” and that, fifty years later, Portugal has “an entrenched legislative system that often hinders the ability to respond to the people.”
The former Minister of Labor, Solidarity and Social Security asserted, “The social state is often in crisis because we’re not succeeding, with the mechanisms we’ve created, in truly addressing people’s needs. We have to acknowledge this.”
Citing the COVID-19 pandemic as an example—a time when “there was no time for bureaucratic complexity”—she emphasized, “We are experiencing a decisive moment, where the question is whether we have the courage to admit there are issues but also that we have solutions.”
“We need a revolution in response capacity,” she remarked.
Throughout her presentation, she expressed concern about “a party traditionally from the democratic center that at present has seized the far-right agenda.”
Ana Mendes Godinho suggested that the Social Democratic Party (PSD) “has stopped having red lines and rolled out the red carpet for Chega to enter local governments.”
“If we let the PSD ally with Chega in the councils, we are all laying out the red carpet for them to reach the Government,” she noted.
The candidate for Mayor of Coimbra, Ana Abrunhosa, also present in the panel, criticized the current Coimbra Executive, accusing the municipal president of “failing to fulfill 80%” of his political program.
The current Mayor of Coimbra, José Manuel Silva, elected by the coalition Juntos Somos Coimbra (PSD/CDS/NC/PPM/A/R/V), “defended 112 measures because he linked it to 112, the emergency number. Since he didn’t achieve 80%, he now claims he’s developed an eight-year program,” she criticized.
“He didn’t fulfill because structural changes aren’t promised for four years. Just the beginning is promised,” said the candidate from the Avançar Coimbra coalition (PS/Livre/PAN and the Cidadãos por Coimbra movement).
In 2021, José Manuel Silva stated that the number of 112 proposals for the council wasn’t a coincidence but rather the result of what the coalition deemed an “urgency” for a change in the council’s direction.
In that same year, the mayor mentioned that he didn’t foresee serving more than two terms if reelected in 2025, as he believed “an eight-year cycle is sufficient for someone to exhaust, in a good way, their creativity leading an institution.”
“If I happen to meet the expectations of the population and my own expectations, if I manage to do a good job—not alone, but with the team—I foresee candidacy again in four years and completing an eight-year cycle,” he stated at the time to Lusa agency.
Ana Abrunhosa took the opportunity during the panel to advocate that “local governments have the competencies, the best tools, and the best organization for addressing social cohesion and territorial cohesion,” highlighting the “huge difference” made by the PS in local governance.
The importance of local governments was reinforced by the PS candidate for mayor of Évora, Carlos Zorrinho, who stated that “the only alternative to combat populist discourse is the proximity of response.”
