A poisoned lunch for Marques Mendes
Last May 6, in the middle of the election campaign for next Sunday’s legislatures, Luís Montenegro, leader of the Social Democratic Party, prime minister in office and again candidate for office, promoted a commemorative lunch of the party’s anniversary. He invited the previous leaders to the transfer. The act was missing only Francisco Pinto Balsemão and Rui Machete, for health reasons; Durão Barroso, absent abroad; and Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, for reasons for the exercise of the position of President of the Republic.
If absences are understood, there is a strange presence: the already announced presidential candidate Luís Marques Mendes.
Marques Mendes has a long political career. At the age of 19 he was already vice-president of the Fafe City Council. After 10 years in the government with Cavaco Silva, he was also in the government with Durão Barroso. He was no longer in the government with Santana Lopes, succeeding him in the party leadership between 2005 and 2007.
Although it has never been truly a first-rate reference in national politics, it has never won an out-of-party election, but in the face of the fragility scenario of national political staff, with all former government chiefs out of the race (António Guterres, Durão Barroso, José Sócrates, Pedro Passos Coelho or António Costa), Marques Mendes has been in the cogitations for many years. In these ‘corners of life’, he made a web of relationships that potentially favored him, in a race devoid of ‘eagles’.
Marques Mendes struggled. Tutelas the media when it was only public. Participated in the creation of private televisions. He remained a commentator, written and television. These are decades of exchanged favors and positive relationships, but also of pet hatred, which now pay themselves with ‘in hand’, most of them in their own party, adding the ‘covid effect’.
The pandemic brought deep crises, especially economic and social, but in Portugal brought a new hero, Admiral Henrique Gouveia and Melo. In my opinion, if the ‘eagles’ of national politics were not absent, hardly Gouveia and Melo would be able to earn an election for President of the Republic. However, in the face of their absence, which adds to the fact that the people do not want to see a low profile candidate in Belém, the space for Gouveia and Melo, who has said he will be a candidate.
The large majority of the Portuguese have already noticed ‘which side blows the wind’, and Marques Mendes, politically experienced and tashed, is already in another. Your race is no longer for Bethlehem, but to maintain the political relationships that make your life.
If the victory in the race for Belém was still seen as a serious possibility, Marques Mendes would not be in that lunch, would want to demonstrate distance from his party and gain political independence, which he has just abdicated. He realized that he would not be the main actor, was an extra at lunch and will be extra to the end.
After Sunday’s legislatures, we will still have local elections. The presidential race started early, too early, some would say. Marques Mendes was the first to move forward and was the first to abdicate (although he did not formally). You still have to know if you got tired alone, if it was tired by the circumstances.
