During the final initiative of the CDU’s municipal campaign, Paulo Raimundo chose to participate in a rally at the Garcia de Rezende Theatre in Évora, a municipality governed by the communists since 2013. However, in this recent term, the coalition was in the minority, holding only two out of seven council seats.
Addressing hundreds of attendees who filled the theatre, Paulo Raimundo remarked that upon arriving in Évora that evening, he noticed posters expressing “strength to govern,” alluding to the election posters of the PS, whose candidacy is led by former MEP Carlos Zorrinho.
“We know well what that strength is. The strength presented to govern is the great strength to indebt, to sabotage. It is a great force to stall; to advance is not with them. It might be with many, but with them, it is certainly not,” he stated.
Raimundo asserted that “it would only be missing for this people to benefit the offender and give votes to those who are practically responsible for many of the difficulties” experienced in Évora and “could have been resolved were it not for their practice and sabotage.”
“It would only be missing for the people to shed crocodile tears to those who did harm and who obstructed, now coming to say ‘oh, oh because it was not done.’ It was not done not because of lack of our will, not for lack of conditions. It was not done because they sabotaged at the expense of the people of Évora, of cleaning Évora, of solutions for Évora,” he claimed.
The PCP’s secretary-general noted that the CDU accomplished much, even achieving feats thought “impossible to do” in a scenario of “two councilors among seven.”
“We skirted blockades, broke sieges, but it was not possible to go further. But from next Monday onward, we are here, with renewed strength, with the strength that the people of Évora will give us,” he said.
The PCP’s secretary-general stated the CDU intends to fulfill its project in Évora, but to succeed, “more strength to the CDU” and “more councilors for the CDU” are necessary.
“We are not here to manage the municipality at the whim of the wind, much less at the whims of others,” he remarked, urging CDU’s militants not to waste “a minute” of the “two thousand minutes” remaining until the polls close.
“It would only be missing for the people living and working in Évora, who built this immense work with their hands, […] to waste the opportunity of having João Oliveira as president of the Évora City Council,” he declared.
Meanwhile, the CDU candidate for Évora City Council, MEP João Oliveira, called for voters to give the coalition a “reinforced majority” next Monday.
João Oliveira emphasized that “the democratic expression of the votes of the people of Évora in the last elections turned into a blockade to political action and solutions that could have resolved many of this municipality’s issues.”
“We understand that especially in recent days, our adversaries have intensified this campaign of rumors and malevolence against the CDU, malevolence against me personally. We understand that, in desperation, they resort to everything,” he said.
For João Oliveira, this is due to an “objective fact.”
Because, “understanding the blockade to which the municipality has been subjected over the last four years, many people in Évora have realized that the solution to overcome this blockade is indeed to give a reinforced majority to the CDU,” he asserted.
