“I want people to say something very simple now, in a few months, in a year: we are turning this around and we are doing it because Livre is decisive,” declared Rui Tavares during the closing speech of the party’s municipal campaign, held in Gondomar, Porto district, ahead of Sunday’s elections.
In a speech lasting around 30 minutes, the spokesperson for Livre projected that in the upcoming municipal elections, the party would have candidacies in “practically all municipalities” in the country—308 in total—even though it currently stands with 49 candidacies.
Tavares expressed confidence that the party “will win municipalities” in these elections and “preside over parishes,” such as Areeiro, Alvalade, and Avenidas Novas in Lisbon, which Livre wants to present as a model.
“Get used to this if you haven’t realized it yet: Livre is a municipal party; that is our matrix, the nature of European green parties like ours,” he insisted, reiterating this idea throughout the campaign.
Addressing an audience filled with many Livre candidates from the Porto district, Tavares urged potential future electees to be “tough with a smile.”
“From Sunday, upon being elected, you will have to be tough at times. There will be some leaders’ conferences in the Municipal Assembly where they will try to give you less speaking time, more challenging meetings where they will try to pretend you don’t exist, and there you have to be tough with a smile, but be pesky,” advised Tavares.
The leader of Livre wants the Portuguese to feel part of a “victorious movement” and dismissed the notion that left-wing voters should feel “downcast” or “sad” in the current political context, following a shift to the right in the May elections.
The deputy called for “joy” among his supporters, stating that it is possible to do politics with “beauty” and rejecting “martyrs.”
“No one is attracted if we’re saying ‘the coming years will be tough, come resist with us,’” he considered.
Tavares also emphasized that Livre “is a party that speaks from a place that is acknowledged and has never deceived anyone.”
“We are a party from the middle of the left. We are a libertarian, ecological, pro-European party. We are a progressive party, but we don’t speak to niches. We speak to everyone, and we are going to build majorities because the majority of people in this country identify with these values,” he stated.
Earlier, Hélder Sousa, Livre’s candidate for Porto, argued that Livre has become “an absolutely inevitable force in local municipal power and the future of each city in the country.”
Meanwhile, the head-candidate for Gondomar’s city council, Leonardo Soares, criticized IL for associating Livre with “radical ideas,” which he defined as mere basic “human rights.”
Besides the green and poppy flags held by the militants present at the outdoor venue, two Palestinian flags were hung on one side of the stage, symbolizing Livre’s solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
