Daniel Antão emphasized that a ruling by the Constitutional Court (TC) on April 11, 2025, fully clarifies the legality of the internal elections, completely undermining the arguments presented by the Coimbra District Federation of the Socialist Party (PS).
On April 14, the federation held former leader of the Condeixa-a-Nova council, Liliana Pimentel, accountable for the process of selecting the candidate for the City Council after she resigned from her position and left the party.
The federation accused Pimentel, who has since announced an independent candidacy for the City Council, of irregularly enrolling 234 people as members during the preparation of the internal elections held in September 2024, without the proper scrutiny and approval by the District Secretariat, as required by the Statutes, with the complicity of Daniel Antão.
“In fact, I received membership applications from Liliana Pimentel, just as I received, during the same period, applications from the hand of the Federation president, João Portugal, handed over by concelhia presidents appointed by him, handed in by Federation staff, and other comrades who contacted me for this purpose,” Daniel Antão recounted.
He insisted that he gave “equal treatment to all the documents received, with the same rigor, ensuring that none was left unprocessed and forwarded to the only competent body to register new members (the PS Organization and Data Office).”
Daniel Antão found it strange that the Federation president considered “the membership proposals brought to the Coimbra Federation by Liliana Pimentel” irregular, especially since he himself delivered and mandated the delivery of proposals from various concelhias and was “notified in a timely manner by the competent body of all membership activities occurring in the district.”
He cited the TC’s ruling, which deemed the “challenge to the election of the holders of local bodies of the Coimbra Federation, sections of Anobra and Condeixa, that took place on September 21, 2024,” as unfounded, confirming the “complete legality of the electoral process, in the action brought by António Lazaro Ferreira, the then president of the Condeixa concelhia.”
“This decision aligns with others already issued following precautionary measures filed by the then Condeixa concelhia president, António Ferreira, against the PS,” he noted.
Daniel Antão regretted what he described as a “political persecution by the PS Secretariat of the Coimbra Federation” and suggested that “the party’s unity is compromised in several municipalities within the Coimbra district, possibly due to ineffective political leadership.”
In the statement, he mentioned that despite reports of his suspension by the PS jurisdictional bodies, he has continued to be “invited and called to participate in meetings by the various national, federal, concelhio, and section bodies” to which he belongs.
“Although I am aware of the various published reports, I nonetheless requested documentation from the party’s jurisdictional bodies that I consider crucial to my defense, but such documents have not yet been provided,” he added.
