At the end of a campaign walk in the city, Paulo Raimundo addressed “the Amadora of culture and multiculturalism, inclusive and open to all, treating everyone equally.”
“To those who have worked a lifetime, those who wake up at dawn, to all parents waiting for a place in a daycare, to those despairing for housing, to all culture workers, (…) to all of those, the appeal we make is, on the 12th, when you vote, vote for your own lives,” he stated.
In front of Parque Delfim Guimarães, where the walk concluded, the secretary-general of the PCP urged voters to vote “to solve their own problems and not to solve the problems of others, for that crumb that grows at the expense of a local management oriented towards speculation and shady deals.”
“If you do it, if you vote for your lives and not for the lives of a few, then here is CDU, our candidates ready to face, ready to govern this city and this municipality,” he said.
Highlighting the 28 years of Amadora City Hall management by the PS, Paulo Raimundo accused the party of “poorly managing this land, to the detriment of everyone’s lives” and asserted that the city “has serious problems,” with “various identified consequences.”
“But there is one in particular I want to emphasize: it’s been 28 years during which democratic management, local government has been removed from popular participation. We have 28 years during which the youth of this land were excluded from the construction of their land,” he noted.
According to the PCP leader, “it’s necessary to restore, to give hope, to tell the youth: take the construction of your land, your path, your journey into your own hands.”
The municipality of Amadora, on the outskirts of Lisbon, was governed by PCP-led coalitions between 1976 and 1993, the year it shifted to the PS, which has held the presidency since then. Currently, the CDU has only one councilor in the municipality.
Prior to Paulo Raimundo, the CDU candidate for the Amadora City Hall, former MEP João Pimenta Lopes, emphasized that the coalition does not “need godfathers behind whom others hide in the absence of a serious, coherent project for Amadora and its people.”
“To begin with, Chega, that candidacy with the great godfather [André Ventura]. A candidate in every municipal and parish council across the country, without being a candidate for anything, presenting someone [the deputy Rui Paulo Sousa] from outside the municipality, who knows nothing of Amadora,” he accused.
Pimenta Lopes also addressed the candidacy of lawyer Susana Garcia, supported by PSD and CDS, urging those “seduced by her loud election promises” to look at “the star of the company they brought last week” for the campaign.
“There was the king of the ‘troika,’ that other godfather, Pedro Passos Coelho. The same one responsible for salary cuts, 40-hour workweeks in public service, invitations for teachers to emigrate from the country, mass emigration, increased retirement age, the Christmas bonus paid in twelfths to pensioners, and stolen holidays,” he listed.
Regarding the PS, Pimenta Lopes stressed that the fact the party received “the godfathering of Joaquim Raposo and Carla Tavares,” former Amadora mayors, indicates that “they will continue down the path that has pushed Amadora to dormitory status over the past 28 years.”
“Enough! It’s time for a change, and it’s now, on the 12th,” he stated.
