The former minister and former socialist leader António José Seguro has managed to be the candidate with the most votes, with more than 99% of the electoral colleges counted, in the presidential elections held this Sunday in Portugal, followed by the far-right leader André Ventura, with whom the second round will be contested.
According to the preliminary count, Seguro obtains more than 31.1% of the votes and more than 1,750,000 votes; followed by Ventura with 23.5%, with 1.3 million votes. It will be the first time that a second round has been held in the presidential elections in Portugal since 1986, in which the socialist Mário Soares ended up being elected president against the right-wing Diogo Freitas do Amaral.
António José Seguro has celebrated his victory by emphasizing the “independent nature” of his candidacy and calling on “all democrats, all progressives and all humanists” to support him on February 8 to defeat extremism and populism. He has surely presented himself as someone who will fight for the equality of the Portuguese against “those who sow hatred and division.”
“I have returned to unite the Portuguese. You will never have a president who pits one part of the Portuguese against the other part. Never!” exclaimed the former minister, who insisted that, for him, “there are no good Portuguese and bad Portuguese, there are no first-class Portuguese and second-class Portuguese,” and concluded that “we are all Portugal.”
He surely promises to turn Portugal into “a modern and fair country” and has winked at his intention to reduce economic and gender inequalities, to address problems in healthcare or housing, clearly opposing the current government. “Politics either serves to improve people’s lives, or it serves no purpose at all,” the winner of the night concluded his speech.
The conservative commentator and former minister Luís Marques Mendes, with 11.33%, has obtained what is already the worst result in recent decades of any candidate supported by the main center-right party (PSD) and is surpassed by the liberal MEP João Cotrim de Figueiredo, who with 16% of the vote achieves the best electoral result in the history of the Liberal Initiative.
In fact, the admiral in the reserve Henrique Gouveia e Melo is in fourth position with 12.34% and surpasses the candidate supported by the government of conservative Luís Montenegro in what are also the presidential elections with the worst result for a candidacy supported by the Executive.
Among the most minority candidates, the leader of the Left Bloc, Catarina Martins, obtains 2.06% of the ballots, and the communist António Filipe 1.64%, both disadvantaged, as is the case in the case of the candidate promoted by the Livre party, Jorge Pinto (0.68%), by the useful vote of the left-wing voters in favor of the socialist candidate.
The leader of the Socialist Party, José Luís Carneiro, has not hidden “the joy of all socialists” and has declared that Seguro is “the big winner of the night.” Furthermore, he has contrasted the candidacy supported by his party, António José Seguro, as a candidacy of stability, of defense of institutions or international relations, against the authoritarianism, autocracy or populism defended by the far-right candidacy.
On the other hand, in support of the candidate who achieved first place in the elections, the former Minister of Culture and son of former President Mário Soares, João Soares, has highlighted Seguro’s victory in a time of geopolitical uncertainty and its figure of consensus.
The Portuguese Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, appeared shortly after 10:30 p.m. (9:30 p.m. in Lisbon) and justified the poor result of the candidate Luís Marques Mendes due to the division of the vote in the center-right political space. Montenegro has also followed in the footsteps of the candidate, who in a brief statement congratulated the winners who advance to the second round, and has declared that he will not support any candidate in the second vote.
The far-right candidate, André Ventura, has assured after knowing the first provisional results, that “the right has won the elections today” and has asked for the vote before “the foreseeable second round” against the socialists if the Portuguese “want to elect a right-wing leader.” Ventura did not want to refer to the polls that placed him, in most cases, as the leading force, and has dedicated his post-election speech to launching attacks against the progressive candidate and the Socialist Party, which he accuses of being “morally responsible” for the “state of corruption and degradation in which the country is.”
Source: www.eldiario.es
