The Secretary-General of the Ministry of Internal Administration, Ricardo Carrilho, announced today in parliament that voting conditions are established in all parishes undergoing disaggregation and that residents will be notified of the voting locations.
The General Secretariat of the Ministry of Internal Administration “has carried out, from the very beginning, all the procedures that we deemed necessary to ensure the disaggregation of these parishes,” stated Ricardo Carrilho. He assured that on October 12, the date of the local elections, “all citizens will be able to vote in accordance with their rights established in the Constitution and the Law.”
The Secretary-General was speaking at the Assembly of the Republic, in the State Reform and Local Power Commission, regarding the parish disaggregation process, in a hearing requested by the Chega party.
This process involves a total of 135 parishes from 70 municipalities, resulting in 302 new parishes and affecting “approximately 980,000 voters.”
In response to Chega, which described the parish disaggregation as “an extremely messy process,” Carrilho clarified that all necessary steps were taken, in collaboration with the Directorate-General for Territory, the National Institute of Statistics, the Institute for Financial Management and Equipment of the Ministry of Justice, and the Directorate-General of Local Authorities, concerning the assignment of new administrative maps nationwide, pending publication in the Official Gazette.
These explanations addressed the doubts of PSD and PS deputies but not those of Chega, whose deputy João Ribeiro questioned Carrilho about missed deadlines for creating the extinction and installation commissions for the new parishes. Ribeiro expressed concern that this could jeopardize the “inauguration of some future parishes arising from the disaggregation” and lead to election challenges in some parishes.
In response, the Secretary-General noted that on the 17th, a map was published with “the number of mandates to be elected by each local authority,” totaling 36,498 mandates, of which “1,177 are new mandates.”
The General Secretariat, which “has been working very closely with the 70 municipal councils” where these parishes belong, and with the National Association of Parishes, acknowledged that “there may be three or four isolated cases” of unresolved issues. Overall, however, conditions are set for the electoral process to “proceed normally.”
In the upcoming local elections on October 12, 135 unions will disaggregate to restore 302 parishes that were combined in the 2012 administrative reform, according to a law approved by parliament on January 17 and reconfirmed by the Assembly of the Republic on March 6.
Following the election of their respective bodies, with the new designation, these local authorities will be formally restored.
After completion and approval by the extinction commission, inventories had to be ratified by parish assemblies by June 30, and by July 1, 302 installation commissions, a temporary body ensuring the setup and functioning of reinstated local authorities after the local elections, were required to take office.
