Marcelo says that regionalization will be an invaluable service to Portugal ″
The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said this Sunday afternoon that he will call the referendum on regionalization, in 2024, if the Assembly of the Republic or the Proposes. For the first time, it places itself on the side of regionalization and considers it to be “an invaluable service in Portugal”, provided it is done with “vision, wisdom and national consensus”.
The year 1998 is long gone when the then president of the PSD, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, campaigned for a “no” in the referendum on regionalization that the Portuguese rejected. This Sunday, at the XXV Congress of the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities (ANMP), in Aveiro, the same Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, now president of the Republic, said that regionalization can even be good.
For that to happen, Marcelo points out, the process must be desired by the Portuguese in a referendum and that it fulfills three more conditions: vision, wisdom and national consensus. If so, “it will be an invaluable service to Portugal”, he concludes.
On the contrary, he adds, regionalization “poorly conceived, poorly explained, poorly implemented, that is, without vision, wisdom and national consensus, will kill the idea of regionalization in Portugal and force centralism, populism, fears and adversaries of regionalization. In that sense, Portugal will not serve.”
Recalling that a referendum on regionalization must be proposed by the Assembly of the Republic and only afterwards promoted by the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa guaranteed that “only in very exceptional companies” would he no longer schedule the referendum for 2024.
The date, suggested by Prime Minister António Costa on the first day of the ANMP congress, is pleasing to the President of the Republic: “I will just say that it seems common sense to let the pandemic pass by and start applying the PRR in crucial years of 2022 and 2023, taking the opportunity to debate the topic and define the statute and the map, leaving the referendum for 2024, if that is the case, and considering in 2024 how to combine the process with the legal norms foreseen for that year”.
After recalling that congressmen “noted knowingly the position of the government party” with António Costa’s speech on Saturday, Marcelo said that “it remains to be known about the views of other parties on this calendar”. Therefore, he challenged the other parties to “submit to the assessment of the Portuguese as their convictions and ideas about regionalization, process and calendar”, in the next month and a half of campaign and pre-campaign until the previous legislative sessions of 30 January.
This Sunday, mayors approved a resolution that advocates for “urgent” regionalization in Portugal. The resolution is the official document that results from the work of the XXV ANMP congress. It was voted with no votes against, with about 20 abstentions and lots of applause at the end.