JSD leader and assembly president resign
Gonçalo Gonçalves, president of the JSD Municipal Political Committee of Vila Pouca de Aguiar, and Ana Diegas, president of the Social Democratic Youth Assembly, resigned from the positions to which they had been elected in February of this year.
In a statement, the outgoing leader of the structure clarifies that the decision is linked "to disagreement regarding the way in which the party's national leadership conducted the process of choosing the candidate for the city council."
The criticism comes after Ana Rita Dias was chosen as the candidate supported by the PSD, when the local structures, both municipal and district, had voted for José Diegas to run in the local elections, having also received the support of the Social Democratic Youth of Vila Pouca de Aguiar.
"I cannot, in conscience, continue to perform my duties in a context where there are profound differences of opinion," says the president of JSD, justifying that if he did so it would be "incoherent and ethically reprehensible."
Gonçalo Gonçalves criticizes the failure to respect "the foundations and processes of internal suffrage," and believes that by not respecting these principles, "legitimacy" and "the trust of those who believe in politics as a space for free, transparent, and fair participation" are lost.
Understanding that the party's youth must be "totally aligned with the chosen candidate," he left because he did not want to be "an obstacle" in this work.
Francisco Espírito do Santo was appointed as his successor.
The assembly's board was also left without a president. Ana Diegas criticized "recent internal decisions, strategies, and attitudes adopted by the party," which "directly clash with the values" she defends, emphasizing the justice, ethics, and humanity on which politics should be based.
For the young woman, "politics cannot be a game in which integrity is sacrificed for the sake of convenience." She points the finger at the way the decision was conveyed, via message, and the fact that it "ignores the expressed will of local and district structures," which she calls a "deep blow to the principle of representation" by failing to show "democratic respect and commitment to local voices."
“I do not want to be an accomplice to decisions that trample on internal democracy in the name of logic that I do not understand” and “I do not accept.”
This is yet another consequence of the choice of the candidate for mayor, after the council leader, José Diegas, also resigned.
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