The Regional Government of Madeira is meeting today with Chega, IL and PAN in an attempt to agree on proposals for the executive’s new program, to be presented shortly to the Legislative Assembly.
PS and JPP were also invited, but have already announced that they will not be attending.
The Socialists justified their absence on the grounds that this meeting “is a staging” and “a farce”.
“We don’t go along with these charades and farces. And so we don’t have confidence in the government, we don’t have confidence in Miguel Albuquerque and that’s why our position remains the same,” Paulo Cafôfo told reporters on Saturday on the sidelines of a meeting of the PS/Madeira political committee at the party’s headquarters in Funchal.
For the Socialist leader, “it’s not the measures that are at issue, it’s precisely this PSD government and its president, Miguel Albuquerque, that are at issue”.
For its part, the JPP said it did not want “to be part of a meeting where the speakers have no credibility, are not trustworthy and practice lies, with the help of the propaganda media subsidized by the region”.
In a statement released today, the JPP’s secretary-general, Élvio Sousa, said that the party’s militants and bodies had decided, in meetings held on Saturday, that they would not take part in “secret meetings held behind the backs of the people”.
On Wednesday, Miguel Albuquerque announced that he was withdrawing discussion of the government’s program, which was to be rejected in the Madeiran parliament the following day, as PS, JPP and Chega, who make up a total of 24 of the 47 deputies in the chamber, announced that they would vote against it.
On Thursday, the Madeiran executive said in a statement that it had invited all the parties with parliamentary seats to a meeting on Monday to agree on proposals for the executive’s program.
In the early regional elections on May 26, the PSD elected 19 deputies, five mandates short of an absolute majority (for which 24 are needed), the PS got 11, the JPP nine, Chega four and the CDS-PP two, while IL and PAN elected one deputy each.
After the elections, the PSD signed a parliamentary agreement with the Christian Democrats, but still fell short of an absolute majority. The two parties have 21 seats.
