The Parliament of Portugal postponed this Wednesday (27) the time to vote for its future president due to the lack of agreement between the main parties to choose a candidate with the necessary absolute majority.
The vote was originally scheduled for noon (local time), but was postponed to 3 pm (12 pm in Brasília) to allow time to reach a consensus.
The temporary president of the unicameral Assembly of the Republic, António Filipe, the longest-serving deputy, told reporters that the deadline for receiving nominations had also been postponed to an hour before the vote. Asked if this new time will be the definitive one, Filipe considered that, with this postponement, “enough time is being given so that there are no more extensions”.
The new Parliament, the result of the March 10 elections, was inaugurated this Tuesday (26), when it should have elected its new president, but no candidate achieved the necessary absolute majority (116 of the 230 seats) in the three votes held.
This situation arises from the complicated political chessboard left by the elections, with the center-right coalition Aliança Democrática (AD), of Luís Montenegro, winning with 80 deputies, followed by the Socialist Party (PS), of Pedro Nuno Santos, with 78 , and by Chega, on the nationalist right, with 50 seats.
During the three votes, the AD candidate for the presidency of Parliament, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, did not obtain the necessary support, as did the candidates presented by the PS, Francisco Assis, and Chega, Manuela Tender.
According to the CNN, Montenegro and Santos met this Wednesday to try to reach an agreement, but it is not known whether they managed to do so. For now, there is no new information whether AD and PS will present the same candidates as yesterday, while Chega’s new bet is its deputy Rui Paulo Sousa.
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