Rui Rocha criticizes “harmful bipartisanship for Portugal” and stresses “fight against constitutional revision”
Rui Rocha criticizes “harmful bipartisanship for Portugal” and stresses “fight against constitutional revision”
In his first speech as president of the Liberal Initiative (IL), Rui Rocha thanks the trust shown and is proud of the path traced at the helm of João Cotrim Figueiredo, whom he calls an “extraordinary leader”. The deputy, elected by Braga, also criticized the bipartisanship that “has had disastrous consequences for Portugal”, inviting liberals to take to the streets in February to “fight against the constitutional revision”.
In the closing speech of the VII Convention of the IL, at the Centro de Congressos de Lisboa, the deputy says that he heard the members, both during the internal campaign and during the main meeting.
“The party needs transformation, we are going to do it and we are going to do it very quickly. We want the party ready for the battles we want to fight,” he said.
Rui Rocha thanked the outgoing president and his supporter, João Cotrim Figueiredo, considering him “an extraordinary leader”, but also the two defeated candidates, Carla Castro and José Cardoso, for the “civic courage that flowed and the way in which I appeal for this election ”.
“So that you have no doubts, in thanking Carla Castro and José Cardoso, I am counting on all liberals without exception. Anyone who wants to participate in the future of IL. In the future of IL, everyone is very welcome, we are all liberals, we are here to change Portugal”, he said.
Before taking the stage to comply with the obedience, the new president of the IL stated that the role that Carla Castro, the defeated candidate, will have in the IL “is the one she has today and everything she wants to do within the possible participation in the party”.
“The past ends today at IL, today we open a new page of growth, only the future of IL matters”, he said, in brief statements to journalists, among many hugs with support.
Rui Rocha also directed several criticisms of the bipartisanship of PS and PSD.
“IL is the only party that assumes it wants a strong civil society, state reform, freedom to be. We accept nothing else. Freedom to be, to choose, to express. That’s what we want for the Portuguese. And that’s also what we’re going to fight for.” “We are not going to allow bipartisanship to continue to occupy the State”, he stressed.
Deputy Rui Rocha was elected today as the new president of IL, with the motion presented by his list to the executive committee reaching 51.7% of the votes.
The succession of João Cotrim Figueiredo was assumed, for the first time in the history of the party, more than one list and disputed the leadership of the deputies and leaders Rui Rocha and Carla Castro and the national councilor José Cardoso in the VII National Convention of the IL, which ends today in Lisbon.