One year away from local government, there are two former presidents who want to return
At least two former mayors have already announced that they will be candidates in the 2025 local elections. In Setúbal, former president Maria das Dores Meira, elected by the CDU in three consecutive terms, in the municipal elections of 2009, 2013 and 2017, has already confirmed that she will run again in 2025 for the presidency of the municipality of Saino, but now as an independent. The former mayor of Estremoz Luís Mourinha will also be a candidate for president of this municipality in the district of Évora.
Luís Mourinha was president of the municipality for 12 years, elected by the CDU and another 10 by the Independent Movement for Estremoz (MIETZ), for which he will run again. Mourinha’s last mandate was interrupted in 2019, when the court convicted him, with the additional penalty of loss of mandate, for the crime of malfeasance.
Around a third of the 308 mayors elected on September 26, 2021 will not be able to re-run in September or October 2025 due to the election limit of three consecutive terms as head of the same municipality, imposed by law. Most of these 103 mayors are from socialist municipalities.
At least another 30 who were in this end-of-cycle situation left their positions to their respective vice-presidents, two of which recently: Ricardo Gonçalves (PSD) was president of the Chamber of Santarém when, on August 30, he announced the suspension of his mandate to assume the presidency of the Portuguese Institute of Sports and Youth (IPDJ) and fellow social democrat Benjamim Pereira suspended, at the beginning of September, his mandate at the Esposende Chamber to preside over the Institute of Housing and Urban Rehabilitation.
Of the total number of presidents at the end of their term, 54 are socialists, 28 from the PSD (alone or associated), 12 from the PCP-PEV (from a total of 19 chambers of this coalition), three from the CDS-PP (from six municipalities), one is the only president of Juntos Pelo Povo (JPP), Filipe Sousa, mayor in Santa Cruz, Madeira, and five are independent, including Rui Moreira, who is leaving the presidency of the Porto Chamber.
Moving in Porto, Cascais, Sintra, Gaia, Faro…
In the country’s main municipalities, the PSD needs to find a candidate to replace Carlos Carreiras in Cascais, Ricardo Rio in Braga, Rogério Bacalhau in Faro and Ricardo Gonçalves in Santarém, the mayor who in recent days was appointed to direct the Portuguese Sports Institute and Juventude, with himself confirming the invitation, although without an official decision yet. The PSD still has to find a successor for José Ribau Esteves, with three terms ahead of Aveiro, after having previously fulfilled the term limit in the Ílhavo Chamber (between 1997 and 2013).
Among others, the PS has Basílio Horta in Sintra (Lisbon), Eduardo Vítor Rodrigues in Vila Nova de Gaia (Porto) and Rui Santos in Vila Real at the end of his term. Also leaving is the president of the Chamber of Gondomar, the socialist Marco Martins, who on Friday was elected president of the new company Transportes Metropolitanos do Porto, thus bringing forward the end of his third term at the head of the municipality.
The CDU (PCP-PEV) will have to find successors for the presidents of Cuba (Beja), Arraiolos (Évora), Évora, Sobral de Monte Agraço (Lisbon), Avis and Monforte (Portalegre), Benavente (Santarém), Grândola, Palmela , Santiago do Cacém and Alcácer do Sal (Setúbal) and Silves, in the Algarve, where in 2013 Rosa Palma took the camera from the PSD.
Vítor Proença, the communist at the head of Alcácer do Sal since 2013, had previously fulfilled the term limit as mayor of Santiago do Cacém, while Carlos Pinto de Sá, another ‘dinosaur’ of the PCP, cannot re-run for Évora for same reasons, but he had previously been president of Montemor-o-Novo (Évora), between 1993 and 2013.
The CDS-PP, which alone currently has six municipal councils, will have to find replacements for three: António Loureiro e Santos, from Albergaria-a-Velha, and José Pinheiro e Silva, from Vale de Cambra, both in the district of Aveiro, and Luís Silveira, president of the Chamber of Velas, in the Azores.
In addition to Rui Moreira, in Porto, there are also four other municipalities that are being run by independent movements and that will have to change president: Maria Teresa Belém, in Anadia (Aveiro), António Anselmo, mayor in Borba (Évora), Décio Natálio Pereira, in Calheta (Azores), and Madeiran Ricardo Nascimento, elected by the Ribeira Brava movement in Primeiro, although with the support of the PSD.
The legislative elections in March and the European elections in June were opportunities for the departure of many mayors who were prevented from running again. In Aveiro, the then presidents of Vagos, Santa Maria da Feira and Ovar were elected PSD deputies, in addition to the mayors of Valpaços and Vila Pouca de Aguiar (Vila Real) and Moncorvo (Bragança). The socialist mayors of Arruda dos Vinhos (Lisbon), Vendas Novas (Évora) and Nazaré (Leiria) were also elected deputies.
When he was in his third term in the Chamber of Bragança, Hernâni Dias was elected deputy and is currently Secretary of State for Local Government, and Rui Ladeira, president of Vouzela, is now Secretary of State for Forests.
In the European elections, Hélder Sousa (PSD), Carla Tavares (PS) and Isilda Gomes (PS) were elected MEPs and left the presidency of the chambers of Mafra and Amadora (Lisbon) and Portimão, respectively.
Other mayors left their positions to direct other entities: Raul Almeida had already left the social-democratic chamber of Mira (Coimbra) to preside over Centro Turismo, Nuno Canta (PS) left the Chamber of Montijo to head AMARSUL and António Martins, who was president of Vimioso, suspended his third term to head Social Security in Bragança.
