Parliament divided over formal session on November 25th; working group will try to reach consensus
Parliament will create a working group to seek consensus and then decide on the model to be followed to mark in a solemn session the military operation of November 25, 1975. According to the spokesman for the conference of leaders, the deputy social democrat Jorge Paulo Oliveira, each parliamentary bench will have to nominate its representative by Thursday to join this working group.
On June 11th, PSD, Chega, IL and CDS-PP approved a centrist proposal to organize an annual solemn session reminiscent of November 25th, 1975. The parliamentary left voted against and the PAN abstained.
Then, at the leaders’ conference on the 11th, the PS rejected that the formal session in parliament on November 25, 1975 was a “mimicry” of the format that marked April 25, 1974suggesting a survey of previous models.
Socialist deputy Pedro Delgado Alves considered this proposed format similar to that of April 25, 1974, undesirable and suggested postponing the discussion of this issue. He countered that it would be relevant to make a prior survey of other solemn sessions such as, for example, the Solemn Session Evocative of the Approval of the Constitution of 1822, within the scope of the Commemorations of the Bicentenary of Constitutionalism”.
This Wednesday, at the end of the leaders’ conference, social-democratic deputy Jorge Paulo Oliveira said that no parliamentary group expressed any position in relation to the constitution of the working group to consider the model of a solemn session to mark the 25th of November.
However, at the last meeting of the leaders’ conference, the parliamentary leader of the CDS-PP, Paulo Núncio, agreed with the proposed initial distributed model, argued that “a ceremony that is not occasional, but annual” was at stake, advocating that the Solemn Session of the 25th of April would be the most appropriate comparative model”.
A position that merited total disagreement from the left benches. The parliamentary leader of the PCP, Paula Santos, even wanted to “express her disagreement with the holding of this celebration”.
The president of the Assembly of the Republic, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, according to the summary of that meeting of the conference of leaders, “understood that it was worth carrying out background checks regarding the solemn sessions.
